Anthropologists and the Bible

The anthropology of religion was shaped by – and sought to influence – new understandings of the scriptures. Maintaining an uneasy, often unacknowledged, usually one-sided dialogue with biblical scholarship, the Victorian anthropologists introduced new comparative perspectives. Succeeding schools of anthropology applied their own particular analytical methods. Over a period of 150 years, despite changes in intellectual fashions, the anthropology of the bible has been a testing ground for the anthropology of religion

Ernest Gellner as anthropologist

Ernest Gellner was at once a positivist philosopher, influenced by Karl Popper, and an ethnographer and social anthropologist in the tradition of Bronisław Malinowski. He approached philosophies as an ethnographer, and his anthropological models were imbued with philosophical assumptions. He was a lifelong critic of the relativist tradition in philosophy and cultural anthropology, and an opponent of what he considered pseudo sciences (Marxism and psychoanalysis). He is perhaps best known for his theory of history, which emphasised the social and political consequences of the development of science and technology. Precipitating the breakdown of organic communities, this fostered nationalism or a puritan (individualist) religion

Meyer Fortes: the person, the role, the theory

In the two decades after the Second World War, Meyer Fortes was a central figure in what was then called ‘British social anthropology’. Sometimes dismissed as simply a follower of Radcliffe-Brown, Fortes’ theoretical influences in fact ranged from Freud to Parsons. He formulated a distinctive theoretical synthesis, and produced the most influential version of ‘descent theory’. Fortes is currently out of fashion, but four decades after his retirement from the Cambridge chair a revaluation is in order

Traditions of kinship, marriage and bridewealth in southern Africa

In the pre-colonial period, and in most parts of Southern Africa throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, marriage, the family and the homestead were embedded in economic, political and religious institutions. The household was the hub of social life, and its layout symbolically expressed the relationships between men, women, cattle and the ancestors. Economically, bridewealth paid in cattle linked the pastoral economy of men and the garden economy of women. Politically, marriages established, sustained and restructured allegiances. The paper concludes with some reflections on the transformations that this traditional structure has undergone in the course of the twentieth century

A Qualitative Study of Barriers to Accessing Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Disabled People in Malawi.

Globally, millions of people lack access to improved water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Disabled people, disadvantaged both physically and socially, are likely to be among those facing the greatest inequities in WASH access. This study explores the WASH priorities of disabled people and uses the social model of disability and the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework to look at the relationships between impairments, contextual factors and barriers to WASH access. 36 disabled people and 15 carers from urban and rural Malawi were purposively selected through key informants. The study employed a range of qualitative methods including interviews, emotion mapping, free-listing of priorities, ranking, photo voice, observation and WASH demonstrations. A thematic analysis was conducted using nVivo 10. WASH access affected all participants and comprised almost a third of the challenges of daily living identified by disabled people. Participants reported 50 barriers which related to water and sanitation access, personal and hand hygiene, social attitudes and participation in WASH programs. No two individuals reported facing the same set of barriers. This study found that being female, being from an urban area and having limited wealth and education were likely to increase the number and intensity of the barriers faced by an individual. The social model proved useful for classifying the majority of barriers. However, this model was weaker when applied to individuals who were more seriously disabled by their body function. This study found that body function limitations such as incontinence, pain and an inability to communicate WASH needs are in and of themselves significant barriers to adequate WASH access. Understanding these access barriers is important for the WASH sector at a time when there is a global push for equitable access

Introduction: Popular Economies in South Africa

African economies have long been a matter of concern to anthropologists, not least in the pages of Africa. These economies are situated, somewhat contradictorily, between global settings of financialized capitalism on the one hand and impoverished local arenas where cash-based economic transfers predominate on the other. The more such economies appear to be tied to wider global arenas and operations that place them beyond the reach of ordinary people, the more necessary it is to explore the logics and decisions that tie them inexorably to specific everyday settings

Exploring the links between water, sanitation and hygiene and disability; Results from a case-control study in Guatemala.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) access and appropriateness of people with disabilities compared to those without, in Guatemala. METHODS: A case-control study was conducted, nested within a national survey. The study included 707 people with disabilities, and 465 age- and sex-matched controls without disabilities. Participants reported on WASH access at the household and individual level. A sub-set of 121 cases and 104 controls completed a newly designed, in-depth WASH questionnaire. RESULTS: Households including people with disabilities were more likely to use an improved sanitation facility compared to control households (age-sex-adjusted OR: 1.7, 95% CI 1.3-2.5), but otherwise there were no differences in WASH access at the household level. At the individual level, people with disabilities reported greater difficulties in relation to sanitation (mean score 26.2, SD 26.5) and hygiene access and quality (mean 30.7, SD 24.2) compared to those without disabilities (15.5, 21.7, p<0.001; 22.4, 19.1, p<0.01). There were no differences in different aspects of water collection between people with and without disabilities in this context where over 85% of participants had water piped into their dwelling. Among people with disabilities, older adults were more likely to experience difficulties in hygiene and sanitation than younger people with disabilities. CONCLUSIONS: People with disabilities in Guatemala experience greater difficulties in accessing sanitation facilities and practicing hygienic behaviours than their peers without disabilities. More data collection is needed using detailed tools to detect these differences, highlight which interventions are needed, and to allow assessment of their effectiveness

Are current approaches for measuring access to clean water and sanitation inclusive of people with disabilities? Comparison of individual- and household-level access between people with and without disabilities in the Tanahun district of Nepal.

BACKGROUND: The critical importance of safe and affordable access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is highlighted in Goal 6 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which seeks to achieve universal and equitable access for all by 2030. However, people with disabilities-who comprise 15% of the global population-frequently face difficulties meeting their WASH needs. Unmet WASH needs amongst people with disabilities may not be captured through current approaches to tracking progress towards Goal 6, which focus on household- rather than individual-level access. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), at the individual- and household-level, amongst people with disabilities in the Tanahun district of Nepal. METHODS: A population-based survey of disability was conducted from August-October 2016 to evaluate access to improved water and sanitation facilities between households with members with disabilities (n = 198) and those without (n = 1,265) in the Tanahun district of Nepal. A nested case-control then compared individual-level access between cases aged 15 and above with disabilities (n = 192) and age-sex-location matched controls without disabilities (n = 189), using the newly developed 21-item "Quality of WASH Access" questionnaire. Multivariate regression was used to compare household- and individual-level indicators between people and households with and without disabilities. In-depth interviews with 18 people with disabilities and their caregivers was conducted to assess the acceptability and appropriateness of the "Quality of WASH Access" questionnaire. FINDINGS: There were no significant differences between households with and without members with disabilities in access to an improved sanitation facility or water source. However, at the individual-level, people with disabilities experienced significantly greater difficulties accessing water, sanitation and hygiene compared to people without disabilities (p<0.001 for all three scores). Amongst people with disabilities, water difficulty scores were associated with having a physical impairment and greater disability severity; sanitation difficulty scores were associated with lower socioeconomic status and physical or self-care limitations; and hygiene difficulty scores were positively associated with self-care limitations and lower socioeconomic status, and inversely associated with hearing impairments. Qualitative research found the "Quality of WASH Access" questionnaire was well understood by participants and captured many of the challenges they faced. Additional challenges not covered by the tool included: (1) time spent on WASH, (2) consistency of access, (3) sufficiency of access, and (4) dignity of access. CONCLUSION: People with disabilities face substantial challenges to meeting their WASH needs, particularly in using services autonomously, consistently, hygienically, with dignity and privacy, and without pain or fear of abuse. These challenges are not captured through household-level data, and so individual-level WASH access are needed to monitor progress towards universal WASH access. The Quality of WASH Access questionnaire may provide a useful data collection tool

Gendered endings: Narratives of male and female suicides in the South African Lowveld

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-012-9258-y. Copyright @ Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012.Durkheim’s classical theory of suicide rates being a negative index of social solidarity downplays the salience of gendered concerns in suicide. But gendered inequalities have had a negative impact: worldwide significantly more men than women perpetrate fatal suicides. Drawing on narratives of 52 fatal suicides in Bushbuckridge, South Africa, this article suggests that Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘symbolic violence’ and ‘masculine domination’ provide a more appropriate framework for understanding this paradox. I show that the thwarting of investments in dominant masculine positions have been the major precursor to suicides by men. Men tended to take their own lives as a means of escape. By contrast, women perpetrated suicide to protest against the miserable consequences of being dominated by men. However, contra the assumption of Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’, the narrators of suicide stories did reflect critically upon gender constructs