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every act of place-making on the beach is anact of rudimentary architecture, from assertingpresence, appropriation of place, to possessingterritory, creating sacred monuments, heroicengineering works or burial mounds.
Finally, Colwyn Trevarthen gave a revela-tory lecture about the musicality and rhythm ofbaby conversations, from the way they elicitresponses to how they use movement and ges-ture in communication. ‘There is a middle C inall our minds,’ he said. This session was anexcellent finale to the conference, providinganswers to questions left unresolved and fur-ther insights into the nature of creativity andimprovisation.
The conference provided an entry to a richseam of debate which took us from lifeprocesses, communication and material cultureto resistance, religious life and a rebuilding ofthe world. I left almost convinced that cre-ativity is at the heart of all human processes,from talk to movement, dance, building andeven growing old.
Stephanie BunnUniversity of St [email protected]
ANTHROPOLOGY ANDGENOMICS: EXPLORINGTHIRD SPACESUniversity of Durham, 18 April 2005
The field of human genomics has grown expo-nentially over the last decade. What began asthe relatively bounded study of genes and theirfunction in living organisms has become theall-absorbing study of the entire ensemble ofgenetic sequences that make up an organism,nothing short of ‘life itself’ – how it works,how it goes wrong and, perhaps most signifi-cant of all, what it might look like in the futurewith human agency as its architect and builder.Not surprisingly, such important strides in thedevelopment of bio-technology trigger whathas come to be referred to as the ELSI agenda(ethical, legal and social implications). In otherwords, somewhere downstream of such devel-opments, a host of academics and policy ana-lysts attempt to figure out what all this meansfor the life-worlds in which people live ratherthan the narrow and often self-referential sci-ence-worlds in which technological advance isfirst conceived. Familiar themes arise: global-ization, regulation, health policy, publicengagement with science and the meaning ofmorality in an era when, to use Foucault’sterm, ‘bio-power’ is in the ascendant.
The purpose of the workshop held inDurham was to bring together anthropologiststo present papers on genomics-related topics toa small invited audience to respond to thethemes and issues raised. An importantimpetus behind this endeavour was thatalthough anthropologists are doing interestingwork in this field, there is little by way ofanthropological focus. A similar concern hadbeen in the minds of the RoyalAnthropological Institute MedicalAnthropology Committee who were kind
enough to provide funding for the running ofthis event as the first of three workshops onthe more general theme of ‘Social Bodies’.
Monica Konrad introduced the day with apresentation which posed the question: what isanthropological about genomics? Anticipatingkey themes that were to emerge throughout theday, she highlighted crucial issues of breadth,scale and connections and how to manage theoscillation between global data sets on the onehand and highly localized conceptions ofreproduction and inheritance on the other. Shealso drew attention to the need to movebeyond the binary oppositions which oftenstall critical and insightful analysis in the studyof bio-technological advance, and whichreproduce the separation of science fromsociety, and individuals from the collectivitiesin which they live. One of the aspirations ofthe workshop was thus to bring togetherreports of what is happening in the varioussites of negotiation that these technologiesopen up, which Michael M.J. Fisher hasrecently referred to as ‘third spaces’ and inwhich are to be found novel configurations oftechnology, law, ethics, economy and society.
Sessions were based around paired papers;the first pair dealt with genomics at the levelof the nation-state, looking at the way in whichadvances in the biotechnology of genomicsinevitably land in localized political and eco-nomic circumstances and thereby find theirway into issues of ethnicity, boundary andidentity. Arnar Arnason gave an update on theDeCode project in Iceland. Seven years agothe Icelandic government’s decision to enterinto a partnership with a private research com-pany interested in using the distinctive featuresof the island’s population as the basis forresearch into genetics and disease generated anexplosion of debate and critical commentary.The Health Sector Database which was thefocus of much of this attention never quitematerialized, and certainly not in the way thatwas envisaged at the outset. However, otheraspects of the DeCode enterprise have takenroot, and Arnason sketched out links betweenthe sagas, genealogies and history and aspectsof contemporary Icelandic society and culture,speculating on the way that the gene hasbecome a fetishized object around which ideasof ethnic boundary are constructed in thepresent day. In a similar vein, Ben Campbellexplored the way in which new genetic andreproductive technologies, which are oftenseen as destabilizing kinship categories andclassifications, may in fact have the oppositeeffect when it comes to ethnic classifications.Campbell argued that at the level of clinicalpolicy and practice there appears to be an ide-ology of ethnic endogamy in place, whichbecomes evident in issues of gamete matchingand attitudes to cross-racial gamete donation.Campbell pursued this argument by teasing outsimilarities and differences in law, policy andnotions of citizenship across the UK, Spainand Norway.
The second session looked at global andtransnational dimensions of genomics. PaulOldham, who is one of the very few anthropol-ogists in the UK working on genomics in
developing world contexts, gave an overviewof his recent work on patents relating to a widespectrum of biological and genetic material.Building on his earlier work on indigenousknowledge in Latin America, he offered fasci-nating and disturbing insights into recenttrends in global patenting. Much of thisinterest in patents originates in North Americaand the developed world, and has been drivenby the rise of biotechnology and genomics.Oldham highlighted the significance of genetichomology and the increase in gene patentclaims made across species, genera and classesof organism. Most biotechnology andgenomics patents are grouped under microor-ganisms, a category that includes ‘undifferenti-ated cells’ or stem cells, and Campbellsuggested that, in the case of stem cells,homology was being exploited to extendpatent claims from animals to humans. Thisexpansive use of patents has already led togeneralized claims being made to ownership ofthe fundamental genetic components of plants.These trends are combined with a tendency todevise a set of patents ‘here’ that could, as aresult of some treaty or agreement, instantly berelevant ‘there’: for example, there are 127countries that are signatories to the interna-tional Patent Co-operation Treaty which hasled to the multiplication of such claimsthroughout the world. The second paper in thissession was given by Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, who presented an overview of theInternational Institute of Asian Studies’ currentprogramme of research into genomics policiesin China, Japan and India. Once again, theemphasis here was on national policy, andresearch covers themes such as China’s ‘onechild’ policy, India’s struggle against femaleinfanticide and Japan’s history of eugeniclaws. Sleeboom-Faulkner identified the dif-ferent ways in which the Human GenomeDiversity Project, and more recently the ‘HapMap’ project, are received in different con-texts, and how these responses create new pat-terns of socio-genetic identities andmarginalization. She described how attitudesto the (assumed) genetic make-up of peopleprovided the basis for discrimination andpotential isolation of social groups and indi-viduals. A key issue here is the close linkbetween genetic research strategies, healthcare strategies and population policies in thethree countries under study.
In the final session, Bob Simpson looked athow human cloning is received within SriLanka’s Theravada Buddhist tradition, high-lighting the fact that amongst many middle-class, English-speaking Buddhists humancloning, rather than being rejected on moralgrounds as it commonly is in the Westernworld, is rationalized as an ethically accept-able procedure. In unravelling this view,Simpson drew on the historical relationshipbetween Buddhist modernism and science onthe one hand and doctrinal beliefs aboutrebirth and the nature of human identity on theother, and Oldham suggested that such radi-cally different readings of human embryogen-esis are creatively deployed in the constructionof local responses to the diffusion of genomic
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 21 NO 4, AUGUST 2005 23
technologies and, furthermore, feature in theemergence of transnational flows of tech-nology, research and human genetic material.These flows offer glimpses of new relation-ships between Eastern and Western scientifictraditions.
In the lively discussion that ended the day,ethics emerged as the major theme – or rather,the ways in which ethics as a form of ‘socialcommentary’ begins to emerge as a ventrilo-quized national voice, through projects such asnational bio-ethics committees and public con-sultation exercises. A conclusion of sorts wasreached, but there was a sense among many ofthe participants that we had barely scratchedthe surface; when we talk of anthropology andgenomics we still have far to go in reaching anunderstanding of what we mean by ‘and’.
Bob Simpson and Monica [email protected]
CULTURAL LANDSCAPES INTHE 21ST CENTURY10th International Forum UNESCO andWAC Inter-Congress, 11-16 April 2005,University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Over 230 delegates from 51 countries gatheredat the International Centre for Cultural andHeritage Studies (ICCHS) in Newcastle forthis year’s joint Forum UNESCO and WorldArchaeological Congress Inter-Congress, enti-tled ‘Cultural Landscapes of the 21st Century’.The nature of the event was inherently inter-disciplinary, drawing together specialists inanthropology, archaeology, architecture, eco-nomics, geography, history, law, the life sci-ences and tourism management. At about thesame time, halfway across the globe, theSociety for Applied Anthropologists washolding its ‘Heritage, Environment andTourism’ symposium in Santa Fe, NewMexico; this autumn, the AmericanAnthropological Association (AAA) will coversimilar issues with ‘Bringing the Past into thePresent’ as the title for its annual gathering inWashington, DC. The heritage bandwagon isindeed rolling fast.
As Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett astutelypoints out, the ‘heritage enterprise is energizedby a sense of urgency, not only because of theendangered status of cultural assets, but alsobecause of the role that heritage is expected toplay in ameliorating conflict and alleviatingpoverty’. Her chapter in the forthcoming col-lection Museum frictions: Publiccultures/global transformations (ed. I. Karp &C. Kratz) draws out the problematic connec-tions between the notions of world heritageand global policy. Universalizing principles in
the realm of world heritage risk themselvesbecoming instruments of oppression, by segre-gating artefacts, traditions or sites of historicimportance from their local contexts and popu-lations.
We thus need to foresee some of the pos-sible dangers that loom around the corner ifthe fast-moving heritage machine is to avoidtoppling over at the next turn. Fortunatelythese were concerns that many of the partici-pants of the Forum UNESCO were prepared totake on board. Although a significant numberof the papers dealt with specific managementplans for potential World Heritage sites, manyof the discussions addressed age-old questionsregarding repatriation, cultural property rightsand legitimate ownership of heritage. As anincreasing proportion of the globe is declared‘world heritage’, the level of commitment interms of conservation and the implications inrelation to global finance issues are corre-spondingly magnified. Thus, though culturehas been an external variable for economictheorists, economics is far from external tocultural theorists. Cultural economics, perhapsbecause it has until now focused mainly ontangible heritage, has rarely taken into accountthe economic nature of an historical event,artefact or landscape until these are turned intoheritage proper. Hence, according toKirshenblatt-Gimblett, the transformation ofsocial processes ‘into heritage and heritageinto cultural assets, cultural capital, and cul-tural good, is a process that is integral to con-cepts of public domain, public goods, fair use,and global cultural commons’.
It was therefore significant and refreshingthat the themes of intangible heritage and con-flict or contested landscapes had a strong, ifimplicit, presence at this conference. Severalpresenters echoed the 2003 Convention forSafeguarding Intangible Heritage in discussingexamples of how particular knowledges, prac-tices, skills and the performances of socialidentities are important constituents of culturalheritage. Additionally, the overall focus onlandscape was evidence of the strong concep-tual relationship with environmental issues andthe notion of sustainable development.Inevitably, given the nature of the event, ‘uni-versal heritage values’ were discussed atlength, reminding us of the significant pres-ence of large organizations such as UNESCOand the International Council on Monumentsand Sites (ICOMOS) in the global heritagearena. Thinking about how to produce a‘global cultural commons’ or a sharedhumanity through world heritage is of course anoble aim. But what surfaced from discussionsand the concern for cultural fluidity or changere-established a degree of precautionary prin-ciple for academics and practitioners alike.
Although the call for abstracts had indicatedseven major themes, these were ‘abstractedout’ of the actual conference outline given tothe participants upon arrival, and many partici-pants voiced grievances about the genericnature of the sessions as presented in the offi-cial conference programme. The connectionbetween papers was obvious once in a session,but much less apparent from the panel or papertitles. One wonders if this was a deliberatestrategy to unify the conference as a whole, orperhaps to see what themes would emerge nat-urally. For me, the most interesting feature ofthe week was the more experimentalapproaches evident in recent thinking on vir-tual heritages, digital landscapes and the multi-sensorial experiences of the past, whichsuggest that we may be at the dawn of a newera for heritage issues – inherently contempo-rary, are we witnessing the emergence of theheritage crusade? Or even of a certain heritagechic?
The use of Power Point was near-universal,leading one sarcastic observer to comment onthe surfeit of visual imagery. My own doubtsabout the conference include the large numberof heritage management plans for potentialUNESCO World Heritage Sites presented withlittle theoretical or conceptual context. In par-ticular, given my comments above, I felt that itwas a shame that globalization theories such asAppadurai’s use of scape metaphors in the‘global cultural economy’ were largely over-looked as an interesting conceptual frame ofreference. I am also generally unimpressedwhen surly academics turn up to such eventsonly to give their own paper and then disap-pear. Such behaviour can perhaps be excusedin the best of scholars, who inspire us withfresh ideas and novel lines of thought. But it isindefensible in those who simply regurgitatematerial we’ve read before, and which hassurely come to comprise the routine of theirundergraduate teaching.
Cynicism aside, however, for such a diversegathering this conference took us on acoherent journey. The work of organizationmust have been phenomenal, and the simulta-neous translation facilities provided in themain conference theatre worked brilliantly andmet with unanimous approval. The site tourswere relevant and well attended, and sufficientquantities of alcohol flowed. All things consid-ered, the next edition, in Florence in 2006,sounds quite tempting.
Patrick LavioletteUniversity College London
For a complete UNESCO Forum conference listing refer tohttp://www.ncl.ac.uk/unescolandscapes/
24 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 21 NO 4, AUGUST 2005
The photo on the front cover, taken from the WorldMonuments Fund (WMF) website, shows a house inHilinawalö Mazingö, South Nias, Indonesia which wasrecently included on the WMF’s List of 100 most endangeredsites. Built in the 19th century, the house withstood themassive earthquake of 28 March 2005 that reduced the porttowns of Nias to rubble and made over 150,000 peoplehomeless. Constructed without nails, its complex structurecan absorb tremors where modern concrete houses collapse.However, the hardwoods needed to replace columns and
panels damaged by fire, rain and insects are no longeravailable, since Nias has been stripped of primary forest.Urgent conservation work is needed if the stone-pavedvillages and traditional architecture of Nias are to survivefurther destruction. In order to house the homeless,reconstruction planners are now studying the possibility ofreviving traditional designs using cheaper, renewablematerials. South Nias, whose plight was barely reported in theaftermath of the earthquake, received no governmentattention until ten days after the disaster. In his article on
pp. 5-7 of this issue, Andrew Beatty reflects on the lack ofdevelopment in Nias since he began fieldwork there in 1986and considers the context of the recovery operation, showinghow selective reporting, narrowly focused on stereotypicalhuman interest stories, has failed to address local conditions,allowing corruption and inefficiency to thrive. Localknowledge is key to the success of aid. But only betterreporting of regional power structures and stakeholders,combined with greater scrutiny of official dealings, will helpto ensure that aid reaches those most in need.
