Change in Algeria through women's eyes

Anyone who is interested in Algeria or in women's issues in Arab World should take a look at this site. It's a collaboration between El Watan and TV5Monde and is well done. The women who are featured are a diverse group and situated throughout the country. It's important, in order to get a better picture of the stakes in Algeria, to hear perspectives from different age groups and social classes.

There were several of the portraits that were particularly enjoyable:  Maissa Bey in Sidi bel Abbes and  Abla Moulay in Tamanrasset. Having lived through many decades and witnessed the changes in Algeria themselves, their recollections were food for thought.

Abla Moulay is a farmer and lives a life that is almost like a glimmer of the past. She reflects on how work has changed in her lifetime and how although she carries on with her business, it is unlikely that young people will continue the tradition. And Maissa Bey, a writer, explains how attitudes changed when women began working in factories.

Their perspective on how society has changed in the face of economic pressures ties in with a theme I studied during the spring semester. I was lucky enough to take an Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class with Brian Spooner at the University of Pennsylvania. The main point was that culture increases in complexity with increased interaction (which is usually tied to increase in population).

Thus it is not at all surprising that culture in Algeria (and the rest of North Africa) should have changed a great deal in the second half of the 20th Century, as populations have increased around the globe.

Famed anthropologist  Germaine Tillion addressed some of these issues as they relate to gender in her work My Cousin, My Husband, where she investigates Mediterranean endogamy. One's personal feelings aside, she demonstrates that the system made sense in a society that placed great emphasis on land holdings and extended families lived in close proximity. When looking at the past (or at other cultures) we often forget the context, but she points out that in the past, when a woman married a cousin, he was most likely someone with whom she had grown up and whose mother she knew well. With the movement of populations, this set of circumstances no longer existed and when marriages attempted to consolidate land holdings, women were then more vulnerable to abuse from their in-laws.

Remaining within the anthropological framework, in the very fine book Asking and Listening by Paul Bohannan and Dirk van der Elst, makes the point that anthropologists do better work when they study two societies other than their own in comparison, because being part of a society makes it harder to evaluate.

I am not a fan of focusing on outward religious indicators like headcoverings or beards. It's overly simplistic and collapses complex phenomena. However, Maissa Bey's description of the pressure the female factory workers felt to wear headscarves is instructive. The key point here is that it was an adaptation to changing circumstances. As the pace of change has been accelerating, more adaptations may be needed and societies are not always well-equipped to handle them.

There are many changes taking place today all over the world, including in the US. However, it is hard to perceive them while they are happening to us. To better understand, I think it is useful to look at change in a historical perspective.

Before I go any further, I want to make a point. Saying that one society is more complex than another is not a value judgment. It also does not mean that the individuals that make up the society have more or less worth than members of another society.

Since complexity is defined in part by greater interaction, often through population growth, the growth of urban areas plays a key role. In this light, examining the Industrial Revolution may help us to understand how change effects culture and society.

As people flocked to cities, the numbers not only strained infrastructure but existing social patterns as well. While greater wealth was not evenly distributed, the growth of the middle class meant that a large group of people found themselves outside both peasant and elite structures. The rise of Victorian morality can be seen as a response to this vacuum.

In the same way, the pressure to conform to conservative social mores that Maissa Bey describes can be seen as a response to a new category of working women, whose presence was destabilizing to the established order. This is where Abla Moulay's portrait is interesting. In some ways, she represents a holdover from a different time. While she works, her work is within the framework of an established category, agriculture. 

But when examining women's work in the market economy, we often forget that before the Industrial Revolution, working for wages was very rare. Thus, gendered attitudes toward it are not reflective of some age old mentality, but are themselves and adaptation to a new situation.

The takeaway is that adaptation is something that happens, and it is not necessarily part of a plan or an agenda. Additionally, since change can be threatening, the adaptations to them often anchor themselves within a familiar framework, like religion. Understanding the (re)appearance of outward religious signs in North Africa (and elsewhere in the region) as part of a process of adaptation to increased cultural complexity is a useful step to making the phenomenon less "othered."

Cultural Preservation, Collaboration, ...Colonialism?

The New York Times ran a piece about the National Museum in Afghanistan. While your blogger whole-hardheartedly sympathizes with the conservators working so hard to put objects back together, the way the article was presented posed several problems.

The first was the harping on the role of the Taliban in destroying cultural property. The story of the Bamiyan Buddhas is well known, and the idea of destroying centuries old treasures turns the stomach, but focusing on the Taliban obscures and downplays other threats to cultural property. In fact, the article does detail some of the looting:

The looted objects have also been returning, as word has gotten around to customs agents worldwide about how to identify Afghan artifacts. In recent years, Interpol and Unesco have teamed up with governments around the world to interdict and return at least 857 objects — some of them priceless, like 4,000-year-old Bactrian princess figurines that had disappeared from the National Museum. Another 11,000 objects have been returned after being seized by the border authorities at Afghanistan’s own frontiers.

Of course, some of the people destroying certain objects may have been the very same people turning a profit on stolen goods. After all, the Taliban does not hesitate to profit from drug trafficking, even though using drugs is generally considered to be forbidden. Whoever is stealing from the Museum and other institutions, it is a threat that will remain, with or within the Taliban. 

The next troubling point was the emphasis placed on the team from the University of Chicago. Having worked on a museum collection-focused project that included Chicago, the issue is not their expertise or professionalism. Rather, the problem is minimizing the other international teams, and even more importantly, the Afghani professionals. For instance, why don't the French archeological  teams, who apparently did the majority of the work, deserve to be mentioned by name? 

Minimzing the contributions of the Afghani team is an even greater problem. Consider this man:

Afterward, people like Abdullah Hakimzada, a restorer who has spent the past 33 years working at the museum, were on hand to sweep up the fragments of the objects that the Taliban smashed — sorting many of them hurriedly into sacks and boxes that later would help the reassembly work.

Imagine spending more than three decades, almost all of it during wartime, working at something that requires great skill, concentration, and more than likely, great personal sacrifice. The others mentioned by name in the article (Mohammad Yahyeh Muhibzada and Omara Khan Masoudi) likely demonstrate similar commitment and Mr. Muhibzada (the archivist) probably has specialized training. The write-up seemed to overly exoticize the Afghan Museum and to paint its staff as colorful characters, rather than professionals. 

This view has been overly present in reporting about looting and museums, as reported in the NYT and elsewhere. It's easy to draw a parallel with the Timbuktu manuscripts. And it taps into an attitude toward cultural property that assumes the residents of the countries from which is comes are unable to appreciate its worth and need an outsider to do the work or make them realize its importance.

The reality is more complicated than that. From a strictly technical viewpoint, their training and materials may not measure up to the prevailing international standard. Many of these workers are acutely aware of this. And they are also aware of the threats to these treasured objects in dangerous situations. Refering to objects on tour in Europe, Mr. Hakimzada said, "I personally hope they never return. At least where they are now, we know they are safe.” 

And yet, they are equally aware of their importance. Mr Muhibzada's statement is clear: “Archaeological artifacts are our national identity. It’s our national responsibility to protect them so future generations will know who we are and who we were.”

The Western view of Afghanistan (and other current war zones, like Mali) is a reductive one, composed mostly of tribesmen, misery and lawlessness. Calling the Museum's collections "relics" plays into this idea. It assumes that the culture in museums is the only one worth saving. As I am lucky enough to work in a large university library, I am aware of the works of literature that Afghan authors have managed to publish over the past fifteen years. Thanks to Twitter, I know of many courageous people in Mali who are tremendously dedicated both to expanding education and to preserving cultural artifacts. 

Certainly, these countries suffer from poverty, war, and lack of educational and cultural resources. The people there do not need outsiders to point out these deficits. But they also don't need to be viewed as uncultured and backward. In the United States (or in France, where I have also lived) there may be a high level of official culture, but there are plenty of social problems as well. It's unfair and arrogant to adopt such a condescending attitude towards the cultural production and preservation happening elsewhere in the world.

Some of the other problems with the article are not speciic to the situation in Afghanistan, but are instead gripes with the way the media portrays museums and conservation. And let's pay attention to the term I used; restoration and conservation are not really the same thing. 

Since I have been working since my undergraduate days in related fields, I may be especially sensitive to how this work is described. And yet, insisting on employing the correct term is directly germane to the issues raised in this article. Conservators subscribe to a code of ethics, they do not put something in an object that was not there before, nor do they intentionally erase anything original. And they treat every object with the same respect, from priceless national treasures to family documents. And this outlook was clear from the comments made by the National Museum's staff.

Finally, it is important to address the idea of professional exchange and collaboration as it was portrayed in the article and more widely in the field. Differing levels of professional training exist around the globe. It is wonderful to be able to benefit from other practitioners' expertise and I know personally of wonderful collaborations that have taken place around the world. However, I am also aware of others that have gone less well. In order to be successful, it is imperative to approach the situation with the right attitude. An experienced practitioner can share his or her skills, but everyone brings something to the plate. The contribution of the Chicago and French teams is important, but the Afghan staff are not empty vessels.

This is something about which I have very strong feelings. I hope to see less of this hierarchical, one-directional understanding of Culture, and instead see a more inclusive view emerge. I believe that this change in attitude may also serve to diminish future destruction of cultural property, by breaking down unnecessary barriers and feelings of resentment from people who have felt slighted.
 

Music, Message and Solidarity

Mali Yaro and Goumbe Star

On Saturday, your blogger attended a performance by Mali Yaro and Goumbe Star  at the Calvary Center in West Philadelphia. It was put together by Crossroads Music, which bring musicians from all over the world and promotes understanding and cross-cultural respect through music. Mali Yaro (Doulai Boureima) and his expected guest, Hadiza Mangou are from Niger, in the Sahel region of West Africa. Their music deals with social issues, like disease, armed conflict, and women's issues.

The performance was very entertaining. The combo was Mali Yaro as lead singer, Mahamadoul-Habibou Elh Amadou on bass, and Seydou Mounkaila on percussion and Omar Tankari on guitar. (The last two might be incorrect, as they were only introduced very briefly at the end of the concert.) Apparently, sometimes there are additional musicians, including a rhythm guitarist and a trumpet player, but they were not there Saturday. The music ranged from slow love songs to upbeat, bluesy numbers conducive to dancing.

The true pièce de résistance was their dancer, who appeared to have dwarfism. He was an energetic and acrobatic performer, who encouraged audience participation and, at one point, engaged in a frenetic dance-off with a particularly enthusiastic audience member. The other aspect of the audience participation was something common to griot (jeli) performances, where audience members shower the performers with dollar bills. Both the West African members of the audience and others took part in this ritual, which created a sense of complicity in the room. Since the majority of the songs were in Hausa, at various points throughout the evening, an audience member came up on stage and explained the themes discussed in the music. A couple of songs were sung in French, one “Niger uni et prospère” which talks about different groups in Niger coming together and laying aside their arms in order to build a better future.

Besides being an enjoyable experience, music like this is important for two reasons. The first is the ability to circulate messages within societies, especially those where the populations are spread out and rural (as in Niger) and where other media, like TV or the internet might be hard to access or incomprehensible to populations with high levels of illiteracy. The second reason goes beyond Niger and encompasses the cross-cultural element that Crossroads seeks to facilitate. Experiencing the music and dance of another culture is a window for others onto that culture, and helps create links and mutual respect and understanding. This is particularly important, given the current political context, where we have an unfortunate tendency to view other cultures with hostility and suspicion.

The New York Times had an interesting op-ed about music and its political power. It focuses on rap and explains the power that rap has to communicate ideas among young people. More controversially, it considers the case of Youssou N’Dour and asserts:

“...mbalax singers are typically seen as older entertainers who often support the government in power. In contrast, rappers, according to the Senegalese rapper Keyti, 'are closer to the streets and can bring into their music the general feeling of frustration among people.'”

However, the assertion that older singers, or singers who use a different style, are close to the government is problematic. First of all, as Mali Yaro and Goumbé Star demonstrate, singers using different styles are capable of transmitting powerful social messages. Another example is Salif Keita, whose music also carries an important social message and speaks out against discrimination.

While the Times article argues that this is inaccessible to many people, since “Rapping can simulate a political speech or address, rhetorical conventions that are generally inaccessible to the marginal youth who form the base of this movement.” your blogger finds this reasoning to be condescending. Later in the article, the author draws an analogy between the way rappers convey messages and the traditional art form of griots. If West Africans were able to understand the (sometimes complicated) cultural conventions of griots in the past, there is no good reason that they should now lack this ability, unless they are ignorant of their own cultural heritage. If so, that is a larger problem.

Furthermore, the article takes an overly rosy view of the messages that rappers transmit. While some might critique the corrupt actions of government or pernicious social problems, others might use rap to attack others, like in the case of the rapper Psyco-M. Additionally, rap is not necessarily the product of mature reflection, but people can be taken in by fine words, and be persuaded by form rather than content.

However, whatever the message that rap contains, it is certainly useful to create a conversation. Societies across Africa and the Middle East that were previously subject to strict controls on speech are now able to express themselves freely. It's a process, and like electoral politics, it would be naïve to expect these processes of transition to be overly smooth.

As mentioned earlier, music serves a broader purpose as well. It allows people around the world to see into other cultures and to gain appreciation and understanding for them. The internet makes it easier to diffuse music and other creative art forms and makes it possible to exchange ideas that are not only on an elite or professional level. Music helps people to relate to on another and to remember that even faraway people share many of the same hopes and dreams that we do. Each little step towards greater solidarity, each small concert, has a worth, that when put together, is far greater than the sum of its parts.

The Zon-Mai in Philly; What Viewers does it Reach?

During the Fringe Festival, I went to see the Zon-Mai which is on loan from the Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration in Paris. It's a house with dance performances about the experience of migration projected on the outside. In Philadelphia, it was presented in the Pump House space, along the Delaware River waterfront, which used to be a busy port and is now underused.

The performances showcased in the Zon-Mai were filmed in intimate spaces, like the bathroom of a Parisian apartment. The pain and separation of migration are very private feelings and the Zon-Mai is designed to confront the viewer with this experience.

I visited the installation with someone who has migrated twice; once from the Maghreb to France and now to the US. His reaction highlights a contradiction that I have noticed many times; the art forms used to express migration are often lost on the people who would most likely relate to these feelings. While he was impressed by the flexibility and technical skill of some of the dancers, he did not see how it expressed anything relevant to his experience as a migrant.

Migrants feel a panoply of pressures; to succeed financially, to meet the sometimes inflated expectations of their families in their home countries, to build new lives without forgetting their families and cultures, to be good citizens of their new countries. None of this necessarily gives them time to understand or appreciate high culture.

I wrote my French thesis about films that depict the range of experiences of immigrants and children of immigrants in France and how they relate to their country and its culture. Film and television are more accessible than dance performances, and thus maybe reach more people and can inspire them to reflect on their own identity and experience.

The home site of the Zon-Mai, the Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration was controversial to open and was born out of complex set of academic and political negotiations about France, immigrants and identity. The Palais de la Porte Dorée, where the museum is housed was built for the Universal Exposition in 1931 and housed the museum of the colonies. Many of the migrant populations in France come from France's former colonies. How do they feel about this? Does having a museum dedicated to the history of immigration give them recognition or isolate them from other French citizens? These questions are unresolved.

Does this mean that the Zon-Mai is useless? Not at all; but it also will perhaps reach an elite audience. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Communicating what other people experience to elites can connect them to the needs and aspirations of the greater population who they are supposed to serve.