Robert Peel, Christopher Columbus, Oliver Cromwell, Cecil Rhodes… just a few names selected from a lengthy list created by activists who demand the removal of racist statues which glorify Britain’s uncomfortable but all-too evident history of systemic racism. Inspired by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis as a result of police brutality, the removal of controversial statues and monuments has once again entered our news cycle and gained significant media traction as Black Lives Matter protestors firmly fix their attention towards the public commemoration of figures who encapsulate the centuries-old narrative of white supremacy. Whether such statues belong on our public landscape is not a new conversation; in fact, it has been, for many decades, a hot topic amongst academics, government officials and activists who question the extent to which historical individuals, marred by their micro-or-macro-aggressions, deserve a prime place on our national landscape.
As a 21-year-old due to graduate from QUB this summer, I recall teachers and tutors posing the question: ‘should statues be removed?’ to me many times throughout my educational career. During my third year of secondary school, I discussed whether the statue of the much contested Field Marshal Douglas Haig outside of Edinburgh castle should be removed given his unfavourable reputation as the man responsible for sending thousands of people to their deaths during the Battle of Somme and Arras. Then, whilst completing the first year of my BA Hons. History degree, I investigated the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement which argued the statue of Cecil Rhodes, a notable British Imperialist, outside of Oriel College at Oxford University should be removed as it contradicted the university’s commitment to racial justice and equality. Now, the question arises again but on a much larger scale with over seventy statues facing the possibility of being torn from their location throughout the UK and my question is: should these statues be removed and, more importantly, if they are removed what will become of them?
Firstly, I would like to clarify that although the current debate concerning public statues is inextricably linked with the issue of racism, the focus of this think-piece is not on this social injustice, as I wholeheartedly admit I am not as educated as I want- or need- to be. As with most people, I am making a conscious effort to do better and do be better but, as of yet, I cannot confidently say I have achieved this. Instead, this piece will adopt a more generalised approach to shed light on whether the statues of individuals who represent the archaic narrative of monoculturalism belong in an age where equality is the supposed goal. Many options present as possible solutions with the two extremities which bookend these options consisting of: the complete removal of these statues in their entirety and also the option of doing nothing and allowing these symbols of oppression (which are often in prime city locations) to continue unchecked and unchanged.
Undoubtedly, the most damaging response to this issue would be to do nothing. In order to make real change, we must acknowledge our uncomfortable past with slavery and racism in general and ensure our commitment to anti-racism and inclusiveness extends beyond the realm of theory and reaches each and every one of us in our daily lives. For the glorification of these individuals to go unchecked and continue is an affront to black people for whom racism is not just an historical issue but a current life experience. As a white individual, I cannot understand how it must feel for a black person living in Bristol to walk down the harbour past the statue of Edward Colston, who made his fortune exploiting black people through the slave trade as a member of the Royal African Company. Moreover, I cannot relate to how it must feel for any student of Oxford University who is not white to walk under the statue of a white supremacist into Oriel College for their classes.
What I can do, however, is listen and it is evident that public opinion does not sit on the fence with this issue- people want these difficult statues removed, as they represent a ‘part of history that should not be glorified’.[1] At the time of writing, a Change.org petition entitled ‘Petition to take down all statues of slave traders in the UK’ had amassed an impressive 151,914 signatories out of a desired 200,000.[2] My mum is one of these individuals and whilst talking to her about the matter recently I remarked that statues contribute to our public memory to which she replied: ‘Germany do not have statues of Hitler but yet we all still remember World War Two and the Holocaust’ and she is right. Do statues really contribute to our historical awareness and memory and, even if they do, it is usually just the positive aspects as opposed to also including the bad and the ugly. Therefore, do we really need statues in public locations when people usually just ignore them anyway whilst going about their daily lives?
But the phrase ‘removing’ statue confuses me- where will these statues go? Are they destroyed? Hidden in a dark governmental storage unit to eventually rust and become a forgotten problem? Preserved so as to keep the legacy of the artist? Given the clear wishes of the public it is likely many statues will be removed from their plinths but my concern is with the aftermath. As we know, the statue of Robert Baden-Powell will be temporarily removed from its current location at Poole Quay for its own protection but given the current public sentiment, will it ever be safe to return it and is it right to do so? Therefore, should these statues find a permanent home elsewhere, away from public gaze? I would argue yes. As historian Ansley Heller writes:
‘Symbols, like statues and important buildings, signal social values to the public. Statues encourage individuals to look at those being immortalised in stone to understand their deeds as strong, important, and worthy of admiration’.[3]
As such, by removing these symbols of oppression from the public domain, ‘the struggle over who gets to control the narrative of the public space is heightened’, ultimately lessening the extent to which towns, cities and countries condone white supremacy. But the mere stone, concrete and metal which make these statues are themselves apart of history, as such, I feel they should be placed where they truly belong, museums- an institution dedicated towards historical learning, inclusive of the bad and the ugly in addition to the good. No longer glorifying the individuals they represent, these statues would become an asset to museums by adding an additional visual aid to an exhibition. Moreover, in a museum setting these statues become purposeful as opposed to ornamental, as they help tell a historical narrative about the individual in question to museum visitors- much like a portrait or painting does. Moreover, by displaying these statues in an intellectual setting, museums can tell the story of why these individuals were once glorified by contemporaries through public monuments and how the reputation of these figures are undergoing constant re-evaluation as we continue to realise the actions of our shared past in the UK and slowly adapt our attitude towards social injustices to become a nation which can become proud of its current society.
[3] Ansley Heller, ‘Breaking Down the Symbols: Reading the Events at Charlottesville Through A Postcolonial Lens’, Southeastern Geographer, vol. 58, no. 1, 2018, p. 35
Professor in History at University of California, Berkeley, and Fulbright Fellow at QUB, HAPP from January till June, 2020
02/06/2020
Greetings from Berkeley to lovely Belfast,
Maruška [Svasek] encouraged me to write some reflections on lock-down and until a few hours ago, I thought I had nothing to write. Then came news of something that had never happened in our vicinity: a curfew! Protests have broken out all over the Bay Area in response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and authorities here, fearing violence, want to clear the streets after sunset.If I was going to have a bike ride, it had to be before 8pm after which no one can be on the streets.
It’s a fabulous day, 60s (F) with sun, but also a very bizarre day, as most people one encounters wear masks. I should be used to it, but somehow, all those hidden faces still produce an uncanny feeling, as if we were part of a reality that until recently existed only in the minds of science fiction authors. People without faces actually qualifies as Sci-Fi kitsch.
I decided to bike from our outpost in the hills to downtown for the first time since return from Belfast on March 29. What would a city look like that was not just locked down but now converted by decree into a ghost town? The effect, again, is uncanny. Downtown streets resemble a Hollywood set with streetlights installed for effect but not to regulate actual traffic. So I did the un-Californian thing of crossing at red lights. Maybe officers will show up later to enforce the curfew, but no one seemed to mind. The shops of course are shuttered, but now some of them also sport the rough exterior design of cheap plywood. For example, Wells Fargo Bank and Starbucks. Our previous experience with plywood comes from newsreels of Floridians preparing for hurricanes.
I recalled words of a prophet, the taxi driver who took my daughter and me back from the airport on the evening of that March 29 return. He had been waiting all day for passengers, and had not been able to get out of line (of only 12 cars at San Francisco International Airport!) to get anything to eat (after we boarded he got off the freeway briefly to buy what you would call crisps).
Among other startling things, he told us that department stores in San Francisco had begun covering their windows with plywood, a sure sign of coming unrest.Why a pandemic would drive impoverished masses onto the streets was not clear. Yet two months later, the unemployment rate hovers over one quarter and last week we got a spark from a supposedly progressive Midwestern city igniting massive protest.
Then came the uncanniest event of all. As I continued uphill onto the mostly deserted Berkeley campus, I was drawn to the undergraduate library and its eye-catching display of that day’s news. Around the start of the millennium, a bright architect had the idea of placing massive cases featuring newspaper front pages in a row before the library entrance. Patrons could thus examine the headlines each day from the Washington Post, Guardian, Manila Times, Globe and Mail, Haaretz, or Irish Examiner.
My cell phone told me it was June 1, 2020, but the news was dated March 16, 2020. It was as though the university employees who dutifully put up the larger-than-life newspapers that morning had wanted to leave some last sign, a dying gasp of a world about to disappear. The headlines and front-page images evoked mystery-tinged hysteria: 8 million patients expected by NHS, socially-distanced faithful separated by yellow police tape at Manila cathedral, ominous hints that pubs were about to close across Ireland… Before biking over to those petrified news reports, I had just been thinking that the campus too resembled the set of a sci-fi world. Now, reality and fiction were indistinguishable.
As it happens, I remember March 16, 2020 very well. My daughter and I had a breakfast of pastries and coffee in still frigid Glasgow before boarding coach and ferry back to Belfast. As luck would have it, we encountered a young couple whom I had harassed on our trip out from Belfast for watching a grim detective show on their phone … without earbuds. Do we all have to listen to that? I had asked. Now I offered them a spare pair of earbuds and they declined with a smile: they had bought some during their stay. Then we got the ferry, good crowd, but still plenty of space up front to “witness” the crossing from gloom into gloom. No social distancing, lots of nice Heineken on draft.
After docking, I recall standing in the drizzle (when did it not drizzle during our stay?), waiting for the bus to Belfast Great Victoria Street station. From there, my daughter prevailed upon me to take a taxi (rather than do the short walk to Camden St.), and then we concluded the day at the lovely Italian restaurant on Botanic, already emptier than normal. I thought I would buy a nice lamp for our apartment the following day. Our stay in Belfast was scheduled to last into June. Yes, history was staring us in the face, but I at least was clueless that this chapter of our lives was suddenly about to close.
Anthropology’s message is both simple and compelling: there are other minds in our world and they think as well as ours; but they often think very differently. (Nolan 2003: iv)
This academic year, I had the very great privilege of teaching a second year undergraduate module in business anthropology. The module is designed in such a way that it helps students to think both critically and practically about the role of anthropologists in business but also the ways in which an anthropology of business can provide an important interpretive lens on the contemporary consumerist world that we all inhabit.
Shaped thus, by the many complexities of our time, this module considers a range of topics from marketing, consumer culture, sustainability, organisational culture, precarity (through the lens of the shared and gig economy), entrepreneurship and the role of the anthropologist in design and tech worlds.
With a lively, thoroughly engaged class, we asked each other questions about the role of the anthropologist in industry settings thereby interrogating the ways in which the guiding ethics and principles from our discipline inform this kind of anthropological work. The module sits in conversation with other offerings on our anthropology degree programme which engage with the scholarly, public, policy, and creative work of anthropologists in very different kinds of settings.
Our conversations were guided by the spirit of these very diverse approaches to what anthropology is and ultimately, the ways it and its’ practitioners both inhabit and work on the world.
In moving through this weave of scholarly and applied anthropological work in the context of a ‘business’ anthropology (or an anthropology of business), we moved to a deeper understanding of how increasingly valuable anthropology is in the sense-making and working through of a world shaped by neoliberal regimes.
Part of the assessment for this module came in the form of a series of four blog posts which students posted on an internal class blog-site and received regular feedback on, thus providing a method of ongoing engagement with topics that they found striking on a personal level.
This exercise proved to be an important pedagogical tool but also worked to nurture amongst the students a sense of how public anthropological writing is seen by many anthropologists as a moral responsibility.
This class, of course, like all others was interrupted by the pandemic, but we successfully moved online. Some of the very final blog posts took a new direction, written through concerns with how the pandemic was shaping consumer behaviour, work-place cultures, precarity, and business strategy anew.
Herein, we collectively present a small sample of these blogs from ANT2036. All of these writings keenly express the value of anthropological approaches in both a pre-Covid and Covid world.
Each contribution is framed with a brief introduction to the student-author and a comment on their views on anthropology.
Thank you for reading and thinking with us as a class.
Dr. Fiona Murphy
Over the first few weeks of the module, we attempted to interrogate what an ‘anthropology of business’ or ‘business anthropology’ was really about. Many members of the class conveyed some of the elements of these debates in their first blog posts. We open this collective blog with one such post by Jennifer Roets who grapples with the ethical complexities of being an anthropologist in industry. Our understandings of these ethical complexities were greatly enhanced by bringing in guest anthropology lecturers who work in business settings to describe their everyday working lives. In February, Dr. Robert Power, an anthropologist working for ALLIANZcame to speak to the class, what he had to say really resonated with the students, many of whom wrote blogs about the experience. Later in the semester when classes moved online Professor David Prendergast, a well know business anthropologist( formerly of INTEL) and now based in Maynooth University, kindly did his guest lecture online. Both Charles Finucane and Saoirse Gallen decided to write about how inspiring they found Dr. Robert Power’s lecture and the ways in which it helped them imagine their future careers as anthropologists.
Intro: Hi my name is Jennifer. I’m an undergraduate anthropology student. I enjoy reading, writing, and walking my dog. I love anthropology because of its diversity and because it fosters understanding by challenging you to look at the world from different points of view
Deal with the Devil by Jennifer Roets
As anthropology is increasingly utilised for profitable purposes, questions are raised regarding the ethics of business anthropology. In a chapter of Denny and Sunderland’s Handbook of Anthropology in Business titled “The Good Anthropologist”, Kathi Kitner describes a confrontation – just one of many similar encounters – in which she is accused of ‘selling out’ by working for Intel. The question to be tackled here is: in working for businesses, are anthropologists selling and signing away their souls?
This concern arises from a belief that in applying anthropology to business, the anthropologist may be overly motivated by profit and will come into conflict with the key ethical obligation to do no harm. In other words, data gained in research could be used to manipulate consumers into buying products and using services. Rather than working towards discovery and understanding, business anthropologists may exploit research participants in order to help companies turn a profit.
How accurate are these fears? I argue that these perceptions are highly flawed.
Assuming that business anthropology is harmful, whilst placing academic anthropology on a pedestal is a simplistic viewpoint. In reality, both business and academic research have the potential to be harmful or beneficial. While it is vital to keep ethical integrity in mind, the panic regarding the potential of business anthropology to cause harm is overblown. The belief that anthropology aids businesses in somehow manipulating consumers underestimates their agency.
Finally, anthropological methods and knowledge are not the only tools utilised by businesses. With or without the use of anthropology, new goods and services will be designed and marketed. Isn’t it better to make use of anthropology to ensure that these products will be truly useful? In this way, business anthropology can benefit the communities that businesses operate in.
Intro: My names Charlie Finucane, I’m 20 years old and I chose anthropology by accident after being cornered by a lecturer on Queen’s open day circa 2017 and thank god- as it was the best decision that I’ve ever made!! Anthropology in its simplest terms makes the world make sense to me, understanding how and why people do things is intriguing and once you understand the basics it is incredible what you begin to notice in the world around you.
“What’s Anthropology? You’ll never get a job with a degree in that!” by Charles Finucane
This is the question that I’ve been asked incessantly since I announced that anthropology was what I was putting down on my UCAS application form!
The relevance of the humanities has been debated for years. They seem to be constantly under threat, whether from politicians cutting funding, or universities trying to shut us down and whilst I’ve always believed we were relevant in the “modern business world”, it’s great to finally have a concrete example I can throw back to the doubters.
The guest lecture by business anthropologist Dr. Robert Power, who works for Allianz Insurance in Dublin as their in-house anthropologist, got me thinking – if Allianz is employing anthropologists to resolve “cultural issues,” surely other companies are employing anthropologists and if so, what are they doing?
Dr. Power said his job was to “help resolve any issues deemed cultural problems” through the use of ethnography. Speaking with employees from both their Belfast and Dublin offices in order to get a better grasp of why things might be difficult-he then offers potential solutions.
Issues such as communication between different departments have been resolved by using a new structure not dissimilar to Durkheim’s society model, and the introduction of an informal weekly meeting called a ‘kaban’. All novel ideas for business emanating from anthropological premises.
He has also been examining the differences between selling insurance in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and why the existing approach wasn’t working. The quote, attributed to Shaw, that “England and America are two countries divided by a common language” probably has greater relevance when applied to the two states within the island of Ireland.
Bernard Marr, in a Forbes.Com piece two years ago, cited a Boston Consulting Group report that predicted by 2025, a quarter of professional jobs will have been replaced by smart software or robots and those most at risk of replacement come from the supposedly safe ‘respectable’ professions of Law, Accountancy, Financial and Health Analysis. When my local dairy farmer has replaced his milk hands in the parlour with robots, you realise that we are really entering into a ‘Brave New World’ and the key to succeeding is to understand it.
With this in mind, it is interesting to look at who else is employing anthropologists. According to ‘Business Insider’, Microsoft is the second largest employer of anthropologists in the world, second only to the US Government; also looking out for graduates in this field are Reds Associates, a consultancy company with over 70 staff with degrees in anthropology, sociology or philosophy, all working with companies such as Intel, Samsung, Carlsberg and Addidas to deliver a frictionless workplaces internationally, as well as a competitive edge when understanding consumers and marketplaces. This is a hiring trend replicated across many tech companies such as Google, not to mention traditional industries such as Ford Motors.
Wish I’d had these answers 3 years ago when I was filling in my UCAS forms!
Further Reading https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-companies-aredesperatetohireanthropologists-2014-3?r=US&IR
Intro: My name is Saoirse Gallen and I’m from Belfast. I am a second year Anthropology student at QUB and really enjoy my anthropology programme. Anthropology is the study of humankind and culture and it has given me great insight into many cultures and beliefs around the world. I love my course as I’ve never had much experience with many of these places and anthropology allows me to learn about the differences in humans and why we all live as we do. I also love travel so anthropology is a great lens into seeing what life is like all around the world without having to physically be present.
The Role of a Business Anthropologist by Saoirse Gallen
‘Business Anthropologists’ have become highly sought after by employers within corporations and large companies. Indeed, many work to reform the ethos of the business in an ethical manner and help it run more smoothly or effectively.
On Monday last week, we received a lecture from the amazing Dr Robert Power, who is an anthropologist working in Allianz Insurance in Dublin. It was a superb lecture and really inspired me to think more deeply about the potential for anthropology in industry settings. Allianz sounds like an interesting place to do anthropological work and is an extremely successful business. The company made profits of over 100 billion euro last year, it is the 9th biggest company in Europe and one of the biggest general insurers in Ireland and the UK providing insurance through their brokers, alongside their partners.
Robert is based in Dublin but often travels around to different offices all over the world. His lecture mainly focused on his role and position within the company.
It was a great opportunity for us to learn directly from a business anthropologist working in industry-particularly with respect to the workings of organisational culture and his input as an in-house anthropologist.
In an average day, Robert comes into work and speaks to as many people as he can to collect ethnographic data for internal usage. He then goes back and uses his notes to develop an ethnography and codes this material online. He has a lot of freedom in this role as he is able to ask any questions he likes and engages with many different levels of the organisation he works in. He works on dedicated projects thus giving him time and space to come back with a comprehensive analysis of the business and its operations from an anthropological perspective.
Dr. Power creates ideas and business models such as ‘small circles’, a form of symbolism and a concept he derived from Durkheim but which he constructed solely by himself! It was great to see how anthropology can breathe life in the cultural world of a given organisation.
Robert believes in supporting culture through inclusive meritocracy, by supporting shared values. Roberts’ creativity is indeed, powerful and I was particularly struck by the way he engages anthropology in his working space. The way he described his job and his love for what he does seemed to me to be akin to a dream working arrangement!
Thank you again Dr.Power for your inspiring lecture on the value of anthropology in real world settings!
Much of Dr. Robert Power’s lecture focused on the relationship of anthropological understandings of culture to organisational or business culture. The class learnt a great deal from his important reflections and we were able to apply some of these learnings to thinking through the role of anthropology in finance, particularly banking worlds and economic crisis. Aaron Archibald dedicated one of his blog posts to this important topic with a particular focus on the global economic crisis. Given what may be ahead as a result of the pandemic, Aaron’s reflections on the role of anthropology in understanding economic crisis and austerity carry much leverage.
Intro: Hi my name is Aaron. I am an anthropology undergrad student. I became interested in anthropology because after I left school (when I had no real interest in continuing education any further) but as someone who has always been interested in people, their behaviours and the human experience in general, anthropology seemed like the perfect way for me to explore these questions further. I am very happy with this decision.
Anthropology, Money & The World Economy by Aaron Archibald
“Money makes the world go round” as the old saying goes. But without people, the entire financial construction couldn’t exist. People devised the financial systems of which we are all subservient to today, and without people there is really no point.
The question is what can anthropology contribute to the development of understandings of the world economy?
Let’s take a look at the 2008 financial crisis for example. Often called ‘The Great Recession’, the world economy plummeted into chaos after years of over ambitious mortgage loans to people who simply couldn’t pay them back, through subprime mortgages. People rushed to blame lenders, immigrants and welfare recipients, but in reality, it was the system itself that was to blame.
Indeed, it is a pity that the world did not pay closer attention to anthropologists working on the financial system, if they had could the 2008 crash have been avoided? Perhaps, it could be argued. Indeed, anthropologist and editor of the Financial Times, Gillian Tett offered much in this regard. But what is most important is what anthropology can contribute to better human understanding of finance in order to best avoid another similar crisis in the future.
Finance has always been a very internal and self-regulating system, where common people on the outside have a very limited understanding of the machinations of the system (Hart & Ortiz 2008:1-3). Anthropologists have the ability, and arguably the duty to study these institutions on a human level and to inform the public about how they work, and indeed, for whom they work.
Anthropologists such as Keith Hart and Horacio Ortiz have spent time carrying our fieldwork within finance in order to gain a better understanding, but I would argue that more anthropologists need to concern themselves with finance. Maybe then the world will understand how valuable and necessary the discipline of anthropology really is !
Bibliography History. 2017. Great recession. Internet document accessed 8.5.19 at https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/recession. Maurer, B. 2012. Finance. Internet document accessed 8.5.19 at https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/finance Hart, K. and Ortiz, H. 2008. Anthropology in the financial crisis in Anthropology Today, 24(6). pp.1-3.
This module includes a dedicated week on the issue of precarity. Positioned between discussions on what the sharing economy has come to mean and a discussion on new forms of work that have emerged through the gig economy, the class contemplated how precarity is reconfiguring everyday working lives. As an anthropologist, I believe there is an ethical imperative to teaching and learning about precarity, especially given the way it infuses the everyday life of our students, our colleagues and our friends and family. This is why it is a necessary feature of this particular module on business anthropology. Many of the students understood the importance (and urgency) of thinking anthropologically about precarity. Therefore, they decided to dedicate one of their blogs to the issue. Here Rachel Griffin articulates the need for us to think more about the degree to which this form of work has become so normalised.
Intro: My name is Rachel Griffin and I chose anthropology as a last minute gamble after struggling with another subject in my first year at Queen’s. It is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Anthropology allows me to pursue a long held love of writing while studying the complexity of human life, in both a critical and celebratory way.
The 0th Hour by Rachel Griffin Precarious. Uncertain. Insecure. Such is the nature of much of the work available in today’s world. Most starkly in the UK, as depicted here, is the rise of the notorious Zero-Hour Contract. The ZHC appears across many sectors, and is definitive of the work available for low-level workers in many companies, including most UK cinema chains (including my own employer), Sports Direct and of course, the Golden Arches.
A zero-hour contract is defined, essentially, by “flexibility”. Your employer chooses when to give you shifts, and you choose when to take them. Getting the time off you need reads as a pretty sweet deal, particularly for students.
Yet, flexibility on a zero-hour contract is seldom reciprocated. Instead, it means accepting shifts cut half-way through, often taking your initial 15-hour week quickly down to 10, or even 5 hours. That’s less than £50 a week, since you’ll rarely get more than minimum wage on a ZHC.
Oh, and expect to give a “valid” reason for every day you’re not available (even though you won’t get more than two shifts a week anyway).
But wait, per the rules of the contract, you don’t have to accept the hours they request, right? Can’t you just say no? Well, do so at your own peril. I did, once. An entire month passed before I got another shift.
Yes, perhaps for students, getting work on evenings and weekends, while getting the occasional Saturday off when you need it is quite appealing. But it falls apart quickly when your time and effort are undervalued and your income becomes contingent upon your boss’s personal opinion of you.
Some of my workmates, and many others across the UK, don’t have parents or student loans to fall back on. As Ken Loach harrowingly depicted in Sorry We Missed You, some even have families to feed.
It’s about time a change was made, and perhaps a more realised anthropology of these businesses can contribute!
Anthropologists have become very sought after in design and technology sectors. The final part of this module is dedicated to thinking about the role of the anthropologist working in these very diverse spaces, in particular with respect to the part they play in translating values and beliefs into design and technology concepts. This act of translation is of course undergirded by the ideals of collaboration and decolonisation. Adam Farhan Bin Salmaan Hussain took the opportunity to speak about the role of decolonisation in a design anthropology project in one of his blogs.
Intro: I’m Adam and I’m a second year anthropology student from Malaysia with an interest in Indigenous rights. Anthropology is a discipline which offers a unique perspective of understanding the structures and processes present in any society, and is applicable to a wide range of different contexts, which makes anthropology a useful tool in my academic and extracurricular activities.
Decolonisation Through Data by Adam Farhan Bin Salmaan Hussain
As a discipline, anthropology has its roots in the practices and missions of colonial actors. The narrative of wealthy anthropologists from prestigious western universities undertaking fieldwork in “primitive” societies and then using this data to take power of the lives of these societies is one that will forever tarnish the image of the discipline.
It is within this context that Bryce Peake, a media anthropologist, designed Tinn, an app for people with tinnitus that is designed to track, quantify and visualise the everyday factors that cause flare-ups in their condition. Tinn, through its application in communities of colour in Oregon, was implemented specifically for use by those who experience inequality due to gender, race and access, and was meant to decolonise data tracking.
Bryce sought to practice decolonisation by approaching the research project from an ethical perspective. Therefore, the Tinn app allowed the database to erase the data of the researcher, thereby placing an emphasis on those being studied rather than the researcher, and users could delete all their data at will, with the intended result of empowering the users.
What Bryce observed during the research project was that there were vast concerns over the weaponisation of information, about surveillance and ultimately, about domination through the research project.
Tinn was successful as an ethnographic device. It served to engage the participants in a context where long periods of participant-observation fieldwork was not possible, and through its design it attracted much engagement from participants.
As an ethnographic method, Tinn is an example of how digital developments can increase the depth of data collection with the consent of the participant and without the presence of the researcher.
However, as evidenced in the concerns of the participants as above, it is difficult to make the claim that this research design was successful in its decolonisation goals.
Regardless of its success in engaging participants, this research project was just another example of a privileged individual gathering data from the less privileged within a context that stretches beyond the concerns of just that community. As acknowledged by Bryce, he only served to mitigate structural violence rather than replace it. Despite not serving the full force of decolonisation, an acknowledgement of violent histories and a research design of this type is a step in the right direction on the path towards decolonising a discipline borne out of colonisation.
As our module moved online because of the pandemic and all of our lives changed dramatically, a number of the students decided to apply their learnings and interests to what was unfolding before their eyes. Their blogs show the importance of anthropology in understanding how our social and cultural worlds are being reshaped by the pandemic. Such insights will no doubt be even more important into the future given the many ways in which the pandemichas altered how we live in our homes, how we work, how we shop, the ways in which children are educated or play and the modes in which we relate and connect to one another in a world of physical distancing.
In this section, we begin with Hannah Murphy who situates the wearing of facemasks into a broader conceptualisation of solidarity and collective responsibility. Hannah hopes that anthropology will further open our understandings in a post-covid world. Next, we hear from Lucy McMullan who describes how working cultures have been radically altered by the pandemic. Lucy hopes for the end of corporate culture as we know it. Annie Fry reflects on the impact of the pandemic on the economy and the role of social distancing in diminishing our everyday lives within this. Annie reminds us to hug our friends and family when this is all over, to seize the day and our lives. Finally, we hear from Nathalie de Leeuw who describes the ways in which consumer behaviour has been foregrounded through panic-buying and stockpiling, Natalie hopes for more awareness of sustainable consumption post-covid.
Intro: I’m Hannah Murphy. I have studied language and linguistics for quite some time and over the past two years, I’ve found that studying anthropology alongside these has greatly enhanced my understanding of the ‘other’- both within and outside of my own society and culture. The ability to use an anthropological perspective can completely alter previously-held beliefs and opinions, and I think that’s why I have enjoyed studying anthropology so much- it has challenged me to acknowledge the systems behind my thought processes and step outside of them.
Face masks: Protection, representation and solidarity by Hannah Murphy
For this blog, I decided to focus on an issue which has rapidly started to affect all our lives: COVID-19. The unprecedented virus has spread at an immense rate across the world and has really put into question our daily practices and rituals. We are now living in a situation which is new and uncertain.
Whilst medicine and biology are key to treating and curing the virus, anthropology allows us to understand how people are reacting to and processing this strange new world.
The situation surrounding coronavirus is constantly changing and evolving and with this, social attitudes are adapting, and new social phenomena are emerging. The phenomenon of “Mask culture” is something which is particularly striking in all of this and the significations that it carries with it.
Face masks have been an important aspect of Asian culture since the beginning of the 20th century, but unfortunately in the Western world their use has been negatively stigmatised and seen as visual representation of ‘otherness’- at least until very recently. When looking at the historical context behind the use of face masks in China, it is apparent that their use is not solely medical, but also an indicator of “medical modernity” and citizen cooperation in helping society to remain afloat during epidemics.
Perhaps, as the purchase of face masks rises globally, COVID-19 has formed a global link between cultures, allowing them to overlap. It appears that once we look beyond the assumption that the purchase of masks is a form of unnecessary panic-buying and materialism (at least in Western societies), we can see how the masks are now being used as a universal form of communication, symbolising solidarity. There is a sense of calm and togetherness that comes from being able to see a visual representation of people taking precautions to combat coronavirus.
Living in the knowledge that everyone is performing the same rituals and practices every day creates some solace amongst the fear and uncertainty. I hope that out of this small act of global understanding comes a better understanding and acceptance of the ‘Other’ in Western societies.
Intro: I’m Lucy McMullan. I enjoy reading, rollerskating, fashion and video games! I enrolled in a degree in Anthropology as I was always that ‘but why? Why? WHY?’ child, hellbent on gaining a deep understanding of the world. That drive to understand and explore the world really stuck and now I am a ‘but why?’ adult, thoroughly enjoying the in depth anthropological examinations of various cultures and social phenomena.
Covid-19 Killed Corporate Culture by Lucy McMullan
The Coronavirus pandemic has barely even begun and has already shaken the globe in an unprecedented way. With the world around us changing daily, it is naïve to think that COVID-19 won’t have a long-lasting effect on our everyday lives. Already we see a huge spike in streaming services, food delivery services and online shopping as virtual consumption changes from a matter of convenience to a government advised safety precaution.
But what does the Covid-19 crisis mean for how we conduct business? Already there are people criticizing the corporate culture they adhered to just weeks ago before armies of employees were advised to work from home in the name of social distancing.
‘Now we’ll really get to see what meetings could have been easily covered in an email!’
This statement is one of the most widely reported criticisms from office workers as they lightly poke fun at their workplace’s wastefulness and poor time management. However, more serious criticisms of the corporate system have been made in the same vein as this passive comment.
From my own experience as a university student, in the last few days, I have been attending online video lectures from remote areas, joining group video chats to discuss work, emailing rather than meeting with my supervisor and have found virtual teaching more convenient than my regular pre-pandemic education. This is not to diminish the struggles that come with our swift move to virtual learning, as many students are struggling to gain access to laptops, books and a decent internet connection from home.
What I want to focus on is the relative ease that the universities and wider corporate world moved from office based employment to remote employment, and the fact that full time telecommuting was seemingly viable this entire time and just wasn’t being utilized due to the apparent lack of need for it. However, several students and employees have been outraged at this sudden jump into the 21st century while their disabilities and changing circumstances in the past have excluded them from university and work in which telecommuting or virtual participation was never an option.
The Covid-19 outbreak has brought to light some of the flawed ways in which we visualize work, productivity and the corporate community. The harsh truth is that most digitally based companies do not need employers to work in an office space 5 days a week in order to be a productive team player. Telecommuting should always be an option in order to accommodate disabled, ill or immobilized employees.
Companies do not need to spend thousands of pounds flying colleagues to meet with international buyers or associates, a phone call or skype meeting is sufficient and will save money, time and carbon emissions. The Coronavirus has been detrimental to so many lives and businesses, but at least when we come out the other side of it perhaps the outdated, wasteful and ableist corporate culture we once knew will be forced to raise its standards and become a more inclusive and sustainable system that benefits everyone.
Intro: My name is Annie Fry, I’m in my second year studying Anthropology. I’ve just come back from a semester abroad in Canada which has really enhanced my love and interest in the subject. I love learning about people, their cultures, and why people do things, as well as the business side of anthropology.
Impacts of COVID-19 by Annie Fry
COVID-19 is a completely new territory which has seeped through our society, leaving people around the world worried about the health of their families, loss of freedom and a worry to whether they can buy for their basic needs.
The challenge was to delay and stop the spread of the contagious virus at the beginning of the outbreak, but some anthropologists argue that the early warning in December about the new virus were not promptly paid attention to resulting in this now, global pandemic. Not only this, but it has led to an enormous economic and social disruption, which has been described in close relation to the 2008/9 financial crisis, with millions losing their jobs or being furloughed until further notice.
The pandemic has shown the world how unstable our food supply chain can be, with our dependence on imported food being exposed and panic buying becoming a serious issue around the UK and £1billion extra being spent on food in the first three weeks of March. It has left shelves empty, with the basic necessities unavailable to buy, causing immense worry for those who are most vulnerable, the elderly and especially the key workers who are not able to buy their food after long shifts on the front line.
Further, the term ‘social distancing’ has recently emerged in the global imagination and global vocabulary through public discourse. It is broadly used to refer to the practice of avoiding physical contact with other people in order to minimise the risk of transmitting the contagious disease, and has been associated with the ‘2m apart’ in social spaces (Presterudstuen, 2020). Anthropologists have provided a lot of important commentary on this in recent months.
Although dividing the nation geographically, it has brought us together in new forms of community and sought a new sense of social responsibility to which we want our loved ones to be safe.
Anthropologists have argued that it is immersive to still communicate across these difficult barriers as otherwise it may lead to not only the collapse of supply chains, but also cultural polarisation.
Finally, although current situation is tough and everyone is waiting for lockdown to end, there are some silver linings which are as a result of this global pandemic. Climate change. Air and water pollution are down as much as 30% around the world, leaving waters in Venice becoming more transparent and less contaminated, the air pollution over the main cities around the world clearer, and wildlife venturing out and re-emerging. Believe it or not, this lockdown is doing the world some good.
Concluding this brief blog on the economic and social impacts of COVID-19 is difficult as there is a lot left to be said. The future is uncertain and life will not go back to the way it has been for a while, businesses will have to use alternative ways to speak to clients and few consumers will be able to go back to their old behaviour anytime soon.
Lastly, take nothing for granted. When the world begins to open up again, hug your friends and families a little tighter, and appreciate shopping and eating out where and when you want, as well as the freedom of movement and socialising without distance.
Intro: Hi my name is Nathalie and I am half Dutch half English. During high school I was always really interested in human Geography and Business, but also the human side of business not the mathematical side. Anthropology as a course seemed to be a kind of a synthesis of the two, which is why I decided to study it. So far I have really enjoyed the course, especially the Business anthropology module I took this past semester. I am working towards becoming a Business Anthropologist and plan to do a masters in either Human Resource Management or Marketing when I have finished my undergrad. As you can tell from my blog I am very interested in fashion and am currently writing my dissertation on how Nike as an iconic brand cultivates and sustains brand loyalty. I would love to someday work in the business side of a fashion company or magazine. I have found that studying Anthropology opens you up to a lot of opportunities and provides you with the flexibility to specialise in other areas like I am planning to do, as well.
Consumer Behaviour and Panic Buying in Response to Covid 19 by Nathalie de Leeuw
Recently, I have been doing a lot of research on consumer behaviour for my dissertation. With everything that is currently going on it is very relevant and interesting to look at that in the context of the current coronavirus pandemic.
The pandemic will have a profound impact on consumer behaviour as people have to change every aspect of their life causing lots of disruption. At the start of the pandemic there was a huge issue with consumers panic buying and stockpiling essential items, with supermarkets being stripped bare of product.
This has put immense pressure on production and the supply chain. People in the UK were queuing for hours to get into a supermarket as seen in figure 3, and this was something that hasn’t happened since the war.
This unusual behaviour was fuelled by fear, worry about the unknown and the way that the UK government has reacted to the pandemic as this is not something that I have witnessed here in the Netherlands where we are experiencing what is called an ‘intelligent lockdown’.
It can be said that consumer behaviour in response to COVID 19 varies based on wealth. It is important to note that panic-buying and stockpiling is only possible for people who have the money to buy products in bulk and have a surplus. It is a luxury to be able to buy enough for over a month as some consumers can only afford to buy what they need on a day to day basis. This is especially prevalent as due to the pandemic many people have lost their jobs or have been furloughed and with that reduced income people won’t be able to buy as much.
As a result, there is a focus on buying basic essential goods like food and not goods like clothing or luxury goods like cars for example. This could incentivise people to reuse, repair or upcycle things and could potentially be a challenge to fast fashion with many retailers having to close down shops. It will be interesting to see how large MNCs react to this and the subsequent impact on fast fashion. Anthropologists will surely have much to contribute regarding the reshaping of our consumption driven world post-Covid.
MA Candidate in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice
22/05/2020
Never before has the statement that church is more than just a building been more relevant.
Many church buildings have been closed for congregational worship since mid-March with some now opening for private prayer. Now ‘doing’ church can look like anything from pyjamas and breakfast on the sofa with a livestream playing, quiet time on a Tuesday morning or listening to worship music on your daily walk.
Part of church is building community and relationships; face to face this has changed but there has never been more space for creativity and new ideas than there is today. Homegroups on video conferencing platforms and churches partnering with local community groups to deliver essential items to those in need. I’ve even seen churches ‘meeting up’ online after the online service for coffee and a chat!
The distance recently travelled in the use of technology within the church is particularly exciting as so many people regard church as being behind-the-times. Maybe some church buildings are behind a bit and do offer that musty church smell… but the talents and gifts of people often found within these buildings are being showcased during this strange time.
One thing that interests me is seeing social media posts of people enjoying their live or pre-recorded church services. I’ve never thought of taking a photo of the minister or praise band when in the church building yet seeing these photos throughout the week offers a sense of community and of hope.
Entering church buildings for the first time (or first time in a while) can be threatening for some, not knowing anyone or sometimes worse – seeing someone you know. Now, this threat is removed as people, if they want to, can watch at home. If you have access to the internet, radio or television you will be able to find some form of church service either live or pre-recorded.
And what’s to stop regular church goers from listening or watching a different church’s service? Maybe somewhere you’ve been wanting to visit or somewhere you’re interested in how they do church. Somehow, despite what Covid-19 has stopped us from doing, it has opened doors to experience the new.
With summer approaching we can think of the loss of many large Christian gatherings and festivals across the island of Ireland. But seeing how far the church has come digitally in the last few months I am comforted in knowing that there will be much online to take part in.
Of course, it would be nice to actually ‘go’ to church but this experience so far has reminded me that church is still relevant and has shown that the message of hope it aims to share is worth learning new skills for and being present on new platforms.
At the start of lockdown, having to miss out on life drawing sessions and driven by ongoing research into transnational family dynamics, communication technology and emotions (Svašek 2007; 2010; 2011; 2012; 2018; 2020), I started using Skype and WhatsApp to paint relatives and friends in their home environments. I am a migrant myself, who moved in 1998 from the Netherlands to Northern Ireland to take up a position as anthropology lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast. The act of painting across distance does not only offer the opportunity to spend time with distant people, but can also be used as innovative research method, resulting in insightful conversation and visual outcomes that can evoke further comments and exchanges. In addition, the material outcomes can be gifted and recontextualised in all kinds of displays, and create a new visual world that captures the affective movement between different locations.
2007 ‘Emotions and Globalisation’, theme issue for Identities. Global Studies in Culture and Power (eds M Svašek and Z. Skrbiš).
2010Who Cares? Emotional Interaction, Support and Ageing in Transnational Families. Report for Changing Ageing Partnership, Belfast: Queens University Belfast.
2011 ‘Who Cares. Families and Feelings in Movement’ In: Robin Cohen and Gunvor Jonsson. (eds) Migration and Culture. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, Pp 89-106.
2012Emotions and Human Mobility. Ethnographies of Movement. London: Routledge. (ed. M. Svašek).
2018 ‘Ageing Kin, Proximity and Distance. Translocal Relatedness as Affective Practice and Movement’, in: Röttger-Rössler, Birgitt and Jan Slaby (eds) Affect in Relation. Families, Places, Technologies. Essays on Affectivity and Subject Formation in the 21th Century. London. Routledge.
2020 Filmed conference presentation ‘Materiality, Proximity and Distance: Covid-19, Mobility and People-Thing Dynamics’, Digital conference ‘Materializing the Transient’, University of Goettingen, Germany. See: https://materialitaet-migration.de/en/conference/emotions/
Talking with my sister on Skype, April 2020 A photograph on WhatsApp, sent by my brother from India, April 2020A photograph of my neighbour on my mobile, April 2020. This is part of an ongoing game, started during the second week of lockdown. One of us takes a picture in our neighbourhood on her mobile, and the other person has to guess where it is, taking a photograph as proof that they have found it. One of my best friends in the Netherlands on Skype as we are chatting about craft and art. In the background one of the pictures she sent me of herself to my mobile phone, May 2020Unfinished painting of one of my Dutch cousins, painted during a WhatsApp video call, May 2020
In Belfast, groups of up to six people who do not share a household can meet up outdoors after the relaxation of lockdown last 25 May. There is now more movement in parks and public spaces. Despite the reputation of the city for its bad weather, the past weeks have been incredibly warm and sunny, and it feels alive as people gather under the sun and bright green trees.
Belfast looks beautiful. The sight of so many people at the Botanic Gardens and the sound of excited teenagers meeting their friends after months in isolation bring us a sense of normality so many of us have been craving. Are we slowly but finally returning to life as it used to be?
Botanic Gardens, 28/05/2020
Imagining the possibility of returning to normal soon is inspiring, but it can also be extremely disturbing when we lose sight of what “normal” entails. I confess that instead of hope, I have responded to the repetition of “this shall pass” everywhere with some dose of anger and frustration since the beginning of this health crisis. While we all want things to get better, “crisis”, or a sense of “state of emergency”, is unfortunately a normalized condition of the everyday of minority groups in various societies. For these groups, “normal” means the continuation of a suffocating, threatening, and oppressive reality. It does not even make sense to talk about a return to normal when the current abnormality only exacerbated vulnerabilities without necessarily representing a rupture with how things used to be before COVID-19.
Normal in mathematics represents a symmetric distribution where cases cluster around the center, forming a bell-shaped curve. Normal, from the Latin word normalis, also means, more specifically, according to the rule or pattern. Considering these definitions, we could start by challenging claims that our pre-Covid-19 world was “normal”.
A report from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth from 2019 found that the world’s richest 1 percent own 44 percent of the world’s wealth. Does that sound normal? The 2019 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index shows that 1.3 billion people worldwide are ‘multidimensionally poor’, and contrary to what one may assume about where these people are located, this study reveals that 2/3 of multidimensionally poor people live in middle-income countries.
Worldwide, research projects are now investigating closely the relationship between COVID-19 and poverty. The World Bank has published last April a policy brief about Poverty and Distributional Impacts of COVID-19. The recommendation is that governments monitor and respond to the situation by implementing programs tailored to each context. The goal is to “mitigate” the impact. But what happens after the impact is mitigated? How is success or effectiveness going to be measured? Are we planning to go back to “normal” neoliberal agendas that reject any form of governmental programs aimed towards welfare and/or distribution of income?
The impact of the pandemic on people is not only disproportionally distributed according to their postcode, but also according to color and ethnicity. A video circulated in social media recently shows a doctor in the Mathira area of Uttar Pradesh, in India, affirming that they would only treat Hindus, not the Muslims. In Brazil, the population in favelas continues to be “found” by bullets and police operations have become even more aggressive during the pandemic. João Pedro Mattos, a 14-old boy from the favela complex of Salgueiro in Rio de Janeiro, was playing with his cousin in his living room when he was hit by a bullet during a police operation. An investigation of this case reveals that there were 72 bullet marks in the walls of this family’s house, what dismisses any affirmation that this was a stray bullet.
According to a report by the Research Network Observatories of Security and the Centre of Studies in Security and Citizenship (CESeC), there was an increase in 56% in the lethality of police operations in 2019 (from June to October) in Rio de Janeiro alone. The latest data released by the Institute of Public Security (ISP), an organ associated with the State of Rio de Janeiro, shows that in April of 2020, as lockdown restrictions were more strictly imposed, there was an increase of 43% of deaths resulting not from COVID-19, but from police operations, in relation to the same period last year. In a single month, 177 people were killed in interventions by the State, affecting black people disproportionally.
It would be easy to blame violence against citizens on the fact that Brazil is a “developing” or a “third world” country. However, this is further from the truth. The Washington Post’s database contains records of every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer since 2015, and their data shows a total of 1,004 people killed by police in 2019, of which 23% were black. The number is even more significant when we consider that the Black or African American represents about 13,4% of the American population.
George Floyd was one amongst many individuals victimized by a public security system designed to fail those who fall out of the standard, culturally, politically, or economically. In other words, a system who has always failed by design those positioned outside of what is historically valued as “normal”. In that sense, the normal is suffocating and invisibilising. Floyd’s last words are very emblematic: “I can’t breathe”.
Minorities everywhere are constantly suffocated by the “sovereign State”, the rules, the standards, the expectations, and so on. Regardless of lockdown restrictions being imposed or lifted, their rights to come and go within their own societies or host countries have never been reliably honored. Their rights to go outside in groups and gather in public spaces are frequently seen with suspicious and severely repressed in that same world we called “normal”. So many people every year are drowned in the sea trying to flee persecution and/or misery, and terrified by the impossibility of ever meeting expectations of being “normal” or living a “normal” life.
The viral phrase says, “We are all in the same storm, but not in the same boat.” As the storm resigns, there will be a lot of people still drowning and struggling with what “we” consider from this more privileged side an “ordinary wave”. Racism and inequality are as destructive and have a much longer history than coronavirus. As we hope for a definitive solution for coronavirus (hopefully a vaccine soon), the solution for that historical and long-lasting pandemic is a much more complicated issue. Those of us who have been lucky enough to be, to some extent, immune to the harsher effects of this other pandemic, should invest in the transformation of that condition and be part of the solution. First, one should at least wake up to the fact that it may be cruel to wish for “normality” as we know it.
This debate is much more complex that it could be expressed in a blog post, but to the question “Are we returning to normal?”, my answer is I hope not!
In Northern Ireland the Covid-19 lockdown started in the
middle of March 2020 and by the 23rd we were officially social distancing. The
fundamental reason for this strategy was to protect the National Health
Service, the ‘front line’ for saving lives. At 8.00pm on 26th March people
across the UK, most stuck in their homes, stepped out of their doors and leaned
out of windows to acknowledge the NHS workers by clapping. This has been
repeated every Thursday during the lockdown gaining widespread publicity. In
addition, people have been displaying rainbows from windows also in support of
the NHS.
For those of us studying anthropology, this immediate
representation of our world through rituals, symbols and commemorations is not
a surprise. People need to find ways of creating a sense of community, a sense
of common activity, and doing so when restricted from the public sphere is an
act of resistance as well as an affirmation of cohesion. And this has political ramifications.
We should not assume the meaning that participants are giving to these rituals. People have different reasons for participation. What I think can be suggested is the power of these events in terms of promoting cohesion in a neighbourhood and in support for the health service and the enhanced status given to its workers. The power of this apparent national consensus will play out in the politics that follows the lock down. The symbol of the rainbow has taken on new political meaning and this will be important.
The country was asked to observe a minute’s silence at
11.00am on 28th April for those key workers that have died. This was intended
to coincide with International Workers’ Memorial Day on which people killed or
injured at work are annually remembered. This commemoration was founded by
trade unions in the US whilst in Canada, in 1984, a National Day of Mourning
for workers was instituted. Since 2001 the United Nations has recognised it as
The World Day for Safety and Health at Work. It is worth noting that whilst the
Trade Union Congress cast this act of commemoration within this longer standing
event this was lost in media coverage. I am willing to bet that British Prime
minister, Boris Johnson, had not recognised this day in the past. But will he
in the future?
The use of ‘11.00am’ and the minutes silence is also
significant. In UK terms, it mimics the better know and better observed events
on Remembrance or Armistice Day when a minute’s silence is also observed at
11.00am to remember those who lost their lives in the service of the military.
We are of course well used to the way in which the monarchy and political elite
line-up to be at the forefront of this event. But then this day is cast as of national
remembrance enhanced by the idea that the conflicts the military serve in, are
in all our interest: ‘The Died For Us’. This of course is not uncontested.
We might also note with concern that society sometimes appears better at commemorating the sacrifice of those who died in war than looking after those that ‘returned’. This would suggest that those in power find the act of commemoration easier (and cheaper) than the act of investing in the victims and survivors.
It is noticeable that this fits a common political discourse using war as a metaphor in dealing with the pandemic. As Costanza Musu has already cogently argued this war time imagery of the front line, soldiers, sacrifice, and an ‘army of workers’ (The Sun Newspaper) is compelling but also dangerous. It places the struggle within highly nationalistic tones marginalising the global nature of the problem. Already leaders around the world have attempted to depict it as an ‘invasion’ introduced by foreigners. It also casts those in caring and healing professions alongside the military.
In Belfast there have been interesting local symbolic and
ritual interpretations of the pandemic. There is evidence of common support for
the institution of a public health service across the ethno-political
boundaries that structure our society. As such, rainbows, which has become the
symbol for supporting front-line workers, have appeared in windows across
Belfast. The Thursday night doorstep clap has taken place regardless of the
ethnic geography of the city. The NHS has been supported on murals on both
sides of the ethno-political divide. Support for the NHS, popular with almost
everyone, has been expressed in common public displays. Prior to March 2020 it
was difficult to imagine a cause that could garner such universal backing.
Yet there are differences. The nationalistic approach to
‘combating’ the virus has been reflected in unionist areas of the city with the
use of Union Jack flags, some with ‘Support the NHS’ and ‘Thank you to the NHS
and all key workers’ written across them. Others have engaged with the
militaristic analogy with banners saying ‘No Surrender to Covid-19’. The
amazing exploits of 100 year old veteran, Tom Moore, who raised £30 million
walking the length of his garden 100 times, was also depicted on a mural in
Clonduff, East Belfast, along with his military medals and a rainbow (see
above).
In Irish nationalist areas the narrative has been based on the rainbow and NHS staff as superheroes. Whilst I would not want to exaggerate these differences, as unionist areas have many representations that do not use the symbols of Britishness, there are nevertheless contrasts in commemorative symbols and narratives.
Why is this important? It is important because the financial and political implications of this, when the immediate crisis has past, will be enormous. The new symbolic status of the NHS and frontline workers will have a power that will be competed over by politicians. This will have massive ramifications for what gets publicly funded, and how. There is now competition with the military in the commemorative calendar. Consequently, who we depict as ‘defending’ the country will play out when government departments look at their budgets in years to come.
MA candidate in conflict transformation and social justice
21/05/2020
As a
child, I lived in a small, rural village on the outskirts of Brno in the Czech
Republic. My parents had built our house next to long stretches of gold wheat fields,
in which my older brother and I spent most of our early childhood playing. Each spring, when the peach trees that
surrounded our home would bloom pink, we’d stand on the edge of those fields
and looked up to watch dark flocks of swallow birds dance in the blue sky,
returning to Europe for the summer.
Because we
were children, we welcomed them with joy and with fascination, but a part of us
always felt sorry for them. Imagining tired wings which had travelled thousands
of miles from their winter homes arriving in an unfamiliar, distant place.
Imagining them lonely and displaced when they finally left the security of
their familial flock to nest on their own. But we were children, and our little
sorrows were quickly forgotten by a game of hide and seek or the sound of my
mother’s voice calling us home.
I still search for them in the sky, all these years later. But green, rolling hills have replaced my yellow fields and heavy, grey clouds loom over the sunny memories of my childhood. I still wait for the swallows to return, no longer a child, but a migrant in a country that does not belong to me.
In my village, 2001. A few years before our move to Northern Ireland
Northern
Ireland has been in lockdown for almost nine weeks now, and despite social
distancing restrictions slowly easing, while the number of coronavirus cases are
on a daily decline world-wide, many people are feeling extremely lonely as a
result of the pandemic.
Trapped in
the relative safety of their homes to stop the spread of the virus, but unable
to see their loved ones or gather with close friends. For me, the lockdown has
brought back memories of my first few months here. The loneliness that came
with moving to another country and the sense of aloneness I still feel from
time to time as a settled ‘foreigner’, never quite fitting in. Even after fourteen
years, it is a feeling that never really goes away.
For
migrants like myself, this feeling of isolation is nothing new. We are no
strangers to being alone. We have carried this grief with us for many years, and
while we’ve been living with these feelings unknowingly or even secretly, this
pandemic has opened up old wounds and an all too familiar sense of loneliness
and loss. The loss of family and friends, the loss of being unable to be with
those you love most. The loss of access
to basic services and resources. The loss of your identity and even your sense
of belonging.
So while the
coronavirus pandemic has come as a shock to much of the world’s population,
migrants have been faced with a reality that hits very close to home indeed. In
the strange times of Covid-19, amongst an extreme feeling of aloneness that
most of the population is experiencing, and with social distancing measures separating
us from our loved ones, we have all become expats of an old world – a world that
we may never get back. In less than three
months, we have all become displaced within our own lives. In less than three
months, we’ve had to redirect our paths and even our long-term futures. And in this way, we have all become migrants.
Displaced refugees drifting to an unknown and an uncertain destination.
But there
is something we can all learn from the migrant experience, something that may even
help us during these challenging times. Because despite the pain of separation
and loneliness, for migrants like myself, there is always hope. An undying faith
in that eventually, we will overcome the barriers of distance and return to
those we love. And it’s my hope that we all learn to live the migrant way. It’s
my hope that we have the power to pick up our lives where they have been unexpectedly
dropped on the ground, and that we all find the the strength to begin anew,
even despite our losses.
So hold on, for just a little while longer. Because like swallow birds, we will eventually join our beloved flock. Soar to the skies at the turn of the seasons and finally begin to make our way back home.
Family. Belonging. Love. My grandparents’ wedding in Ořechov, 1961
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend,’
observed Groucho Marx, before adding that, ‘inside of a dog, it’s too dark to
read…’ In these dark times, we can at least read and so I thought I might
suggest something to add to everyone’s lockdown reading list. Perhaps something
utopian/dystopian from the world of sci fi would be best but my pick is just
something that struck a chord with me. I’ll try to shoehorn in a Covid-19 link
by the end, if I can. Don’t worry about missing it: it probably won’t be
subtle.
The book I have in mind is one I read earlier
this year in that happy pre-lockdown period when it was still bliss to be alive
(this may be a slight exaggeration. Belfast in January is not Paris in spring,
or so I’ve been told). It’s Berlin Finale by Heinz Rein. I hadn’t heard
of it before: it was just something that caught my eye one day in a bookshop.
The virtue of browsing in actual bookshops is the limited stock, forcing you to
be flexible if you want to come out with any sort of a book to read.
Second-hand bookshops are especially good in this regard as they may contain
just one solitary book that you might actually consider reading and it usually
takes some hunting to find it. One Swansea bookshop I knew simply dispensed
with any attempt at organisation whatsoever with the result that no shelf could
be safely left unexamined. I’m not sure I still have the stamina for that sort
of thing.
Having spent the summer of 1989 in Berlin
(missing the fall of the Wall, naturally, but at least getting to peek behind
the Iron Curtain while it was still hanging), I have a soft spot for all things
Berlin. Rein’s book deals with the closing days of the war and the efforts of a
collection of surviving leftists to stay alive until the Russians arrive,
trying to stay out of the clutches of the remnants of the Nazi regime without
also getting themselves killed by their Russian liberators in the confusion.
The book was written shortly after the war and Rein punctuates it with passages
of Nazi propaganda hailing non-existent German victories as the Russians grow
ever closer.
What really drives the book is its outrage at
the complicity of the ordinary population with the regime, the day to day
compliance of most citizens, interspersed with enthusiastic cruelty on the part
of the genuine fanatics. Rein’s heroes, the few who held out and quietly
resisted the regime, worry that a whole generation may have been poisoned by
growing up in Hitler’s shadow.
The question of complicity appealed to me
because I’m interested in the ways our social relationships pull us this way
and that. This sets the scene for social and political struggles over whose
voices are recognised as authoritative, which expectations we have to navigate
around and which ones we end up internalising. One familiar response to these
pressures is to strike the pose of the heroic individualist who casts off all
social entanglements in the name of personal freedom. This strikes me as a poor
response, not only because it is ultimately an impossible goal, but also
because it also looks a lot like a cop-out. We are inextricably caught up in
social life, weighing the demands of others and making demands on others in
turn, vulnerable and potentially dominating in turn. If we refuse to
acknowledge this, we aren’t even going to begin to think about our
responsibility for the various roles we play in life.
A different sort of mistake is that of the angry
moralist who wants to judge everyone equally guilty for collective outcomes
because we were all involved in some way or another. Famously, philosopher Karl
Jaspers claimed that all Germans bore ‘metaphysical guilt’ for the holocaust.
This seems excessive: surely we bear different degrees of responsibility
depending on the different roles we play? Attributing responsibility is a
tricky business. The reckless populist leader who tries to undermine the public
health policies during a pandemic bears more responsibility for the resulting
failures than his media-befuddled supporters (to pluck an example out of thin
air, and, yes, this is the Covid-19 shoehorn bit. You were warned…) but they
must bear some share of
responsibility for putting him there in the first place.
One effect of the current crisis has been to
bring to the fore the fact that our lives are deeply interdependent. Our daily
lives are sustained by a vast complex scheme of social cooperation, stretching
far beyond our borders, which goes largely unnoticed until parts of it stop
functioning. We are responsible for our own contributions to this scheme, of
course and when these are valuable we can take pride in them. But perhaps we
are also complicit to some degree in sustaining of the more problematic
patterns of interaction, those that damage the lives of others, whether through
social and economic inequalities or environmental degradation. Being
responsible, however, is not just a matter of looking back at the things we
should have done differently, acknowledging the times when we should have
resisted rather than complied, like Rein’s underground heroes. It is also a
matter of looking forward, to the ways we can reshape our social relations.
The Greek historian, Polybius, believed that
history moved in a circle. Human institutions were impermanent and when they
were working well we could only hope to stave off decline for as long as
possible before corruption set in. That was the bad news. The good news was
that it was always possible, even when things looked most hopeless, that they
might be set on the path to improvement. Whether we have grounds for cautious
optimism about our future depends entirely on what we do next.
Bad Bridgets: Hear the true stories of notorious Irish girls and women who emigrated to North America in the hope of finding a new life, but went on to become thieves, kidnappers and even serial killers.#LoveQUB | #TrueCrime | #SSDGM@elaineffarrell@leannemcck
