By contributor Sean Carey Mauritius is in the premier league of the world’s democracies, according to the newly released London-based Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. The Index, which monitors 167 nations ranks the small Indian Ocean island, with a population of 1.3 million, 24th out of 25 “full democracies,” just ahead of Spain. Norway is [...]
By contributor Sean Carey Mauritius continues to change. The Indian Ocean island, famous for its white coral beaches and azure seas, has come a long way since independence from the U.K., in 1968. The transformation of the economy from a reliance on sugar exports to Europe to one that is forecast to grow by 4.1 [...]
By contributor Sean Carey Last week it looked like U.S. and European supermarket chains like Wal-Mart, Tesco and Carrefour would soon be allowed to enter the $396 billion retail market in India. The fast-growing country, Asia’s third-largest economy after China and Japan, has a population of 1.2 billion, which makes it the world’s second most [...]
CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) has launched an Open call for Proposals for the “Farms of the Future” research project, aiming at the: Development of a method to study farmer’s social, cultural and gender specific barriers for enabling behavioral change and improve adaptive capacity, based on farmers’ exchanges between [...]
This just in from Sean Carey, cultural anthropologist at Roehampton University: Big and growing excitement in the UK about the Royal Wedding next month. This article on what the Palace is telling guests about etiquette and protocol includes advice about trying not to kiss the Queen! And this from the BBC about how to address [...]
So-called honor killings take the wind out of a form of cultural relativism that I refer to as absolute cultural relativism. According to absolute cultural relativism, anything that goes on in a particular culture, and is justified within that culture, cannot be questioned or changed by insiders or outsiders. For insiders, such questioning is cultural [...]
European colonists came to North America seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity. They destroyed the very same for those who had lived here for centuries. One person’s liberty often means someone else’s shackles. One group’s success often means another group is in ruins. The boom and crackle of Independence Day fireworks in the United States [...]
Journalist and filmmaker Sebastian Junger says that he wanted to make you feel like you are actually there in a remote combat outpost in Afghanistan in Restrepo. He and his partner Tim Hetherington, succeeded. After the documentary’s powerful 90 minutes, people in the packed AFI theater in Silver Spring, Md., on Friday June 28 were [...]
Anthropology is an essential part of everyone’s education today, according to comments in an article about “foreignness” in the special holiday double edition of the Economist. Why is anthropology so important now? Because more people than ever are “foreigners” for one reason or another, willingly or unwillingly. Last year, nearly half of the people of [...]
