Ranthropologist

Category: Daily Reads

  • Daily Reads: Parent-noia

    Daily Reads: Parent-noia

    This will sound familiar to everyone within my generation, everyone older than me, and probably to plenty of people younger than me. When I was a kid, my sister and I left the house to play unsupervised every day. We met our friend Hyla, who is my dear friend to this day, and ran into the hills (which we, for some reason, called “the canyon”). The canyon was bordered by freight train tracks. It was criss-crossed by rabbit trails and bisected by a creek flowing with suburban run-off from the houses on top of the hill. We played in the canyon for hours – building forts, pretending to be “wilderness girls,” following trails – and other than the occasional skinned knee or slightly twisted ankle, never got hurt. We were home for dinner – responding to the familiar sound of Hyla’s mom sing-songing her name to call her home, to the “feeooweep!” of my mom’s piercing whistle punctuating the air, beckoning to Hilary and me. I don’t remember our parents ever telling us not to play, unsupervised, outside – in fact, more often than not, they were shooing us away, importuning us to get out of the house.

    Are those days gone? I’m not a parent, but from what I read things have changed, and probably not for the better. Today’s Daily Read is long, but worth it for how author Kim Brooks, writing in Salon, sensitively details her experience with being arrested and charged for leaving her toddler in the car for five minutes while she ran into a store. Brooks is not looking for sympathy, but her story is wrenching. Parents and non-parents should both read it, especially for the end when Brooks asks important questions about how parenting and childhood seem to have changed. She wonders if we’ve become too paranoid, too controlling, and too afraid – to the point where leaving a child unsupervised for even just a few minutes becomes a matter for the criminal justice system, often triggered by a bystander who feels they are acting as a good samaritan.

    I could write a great deal about this, but these Daily Read posts are supposed to be synopses, not treatises. I’ll simply add that as an anthropologist I recognize how US parenting differs quite dramatically from parenting in many other parts of the world. I also can see how the modern media environment has contributed to today’s fear-based parenting – but both of these topics are better left for another post.

    The day I left my son in the car

  • Daily Reads: K-Cups

    Daily Reads: K-Cups

    Do you use one of those Keurig coffee machines that use the little pre-filled pods called K-Cups? Have you ever thought about whether you can recycle those pods or how many you end up sending to the landfill? When I first saw a Keurig machine I was, frankly, dismissive; it seemed like a machine that was trying to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist. But really, isn’t that what product marketing and advertising is all about – manipulating consumers into wanting and buying things they don’t need? I was immediately turned off by the wastefulness of K-Cups but apparently I’m in the minority, because Keurig machines are now widely used. It turns out that the creator of the Keurig is in that minority, too. In this article from Brian Bennet of C|Net, Keurig inventor John Sylvan admits that his machines and their pods are overpriced and environmentally damaging. Too little too late, since they are now so popular, but some people are starting to figure it out. This article by Maria Godoy from the NPR blog The Salt discusses a parody video that highlights the environmental disaster of the K-Cup. It’s funny, but it’s also informative. And if you really want to drill down into the Keurig problem, this article from The Atlantic by James Hamblin will fill you in. If you are a Keurig user, maybe reading these articles will cause you to reconsider.

    Keurig’s own inventor not a fan of K-Cups

    Coffee Horror: Parody Pokes At Environmental Absurdity Of K-Cups

    A Brewing Problem

  • Daily Reads: Color Blind

    Daily Reads: Color Blind

    This Daily Read relates directly to my last post about race, but focuses more on the social dimensions of racial categories and how people are perceived. Jenée Desmond-Harris of Vox reviews a study that shows that white people perceive lighter-skinned people of color to be more successful and intelligent than their darker-skinned peers. Even with everything else being equal – education, achievement, social class, etc. – darker-skinned people were still categorized as less intelligent and capable of success. This is exactly what I was talking about in my last post when I explained ascribed status. This is highly problematic for the way it categorizes people based on purely arbitrary physical characteristics. As the article says, “It’s reasonable to conclude that this type of thinking  — whether it’s conscious or the result of implicit bias — could taint decisions about everything from hiring and promotions, awards and internships, to mentorship and all of the other judgments that determine the trajectory of a person’s life.” I think it’s important to be aware of these unconscious biases so we can try to bring them into the realm of consciousness and hopefully be less likely to act on them.

    Study: lighter-skinned black and Hispanic people look smarter to white people

  • Daily Reads: No Comment

    Daily Reads: No Comment

    Today’s Daily Read isn’t the most scintillating article I’ve ever read, but the information it contains is revealing and important, so I believe it is worth the quick read. Cathleen O’Grady of Arstechnica reports on two studies that looked at the influence of online comments on the effectiveness of public service announcements (PSAs). The study created mock PSAs on the safety and efficacy of vaccines – one pro-vaccine and one anti-vaccine – and paired them with anonymous comments that supported or refuted the message of the PSAs. The researchers made sure to attribute each PSA to health organizations that were perceived as credible by the study participants. In the first study, participants were more likely to have their opinions swayed by the PSA if they thought the source was credible; however, if they found the commenters to be credible they were less likely to be swayed by the PSA. In the second study, the participants were provided with general information about the commenters – e.g. one commenter was identified within the comment as a college student, another as a health care lobbyist, and a third as a medical doctor specializing in disease and vaccines. In this study, the participants were more swayed by the commenters they perceived as credible – in this case, the self-identified doctor – than they were by the PSA. This occurred regardless of whether the doctor agreed or disagreed with the PSA. As the article notes, this research is not definitive, but it points out an important weakness in how people perceive information they receive from anonymous comments – which is, how can we know that a self-identified commenter truly is the expert he or she claims to be? I think this is hugely important, and very troubling. It’s one thing to trust the credibility of an anonymous restaurant review on Yelp; it’s quite another to trust anonymous opinions on critical health and social issues.

    Don’t read the comments—they can make you mistrust real experts

  • Daily Reads: Anybody Want A Peanut?

    Daily Reads: Anybody Want A Peanut?

    Today’s Daily Read relates to the one I posted a few days ago about hygiene, but this time it’s about food allergies – specifically, peanut allergies. Rob Stein writes for NPR’s blog The Salt that children who are fed foods containing peanuts from a young age are much less likely to develop a peanut allergy by the age of 5. This mechanism may operate by training babies’ immune systems very early to recognize peanuts and thus prevent an allergic overreaction. This is superficially similar to how vaccination works, and also how the hygiene hypothesis* works – early exposure means a stronger, more resistant immune system. The article appropriately cautions that parents who haven’t already fed their young children peanuts need to proceed carefully; but it seems that starting to give peanut-containing foods between 4-12 months may just prevent peanut allergies later. I’m loving all these new studies showing that coddling kids is not actually protecting them; instead, it seems that what we think is protecting them might be making them weaker in the long run.

    Feeding Babies Foods With Peanuts Appears to Prevent Allergies

    *And here’s a bonus article about the hygiene hypothesis that relates to allergies as well – but this one proposes that using automatic dishwashers instead of letting kids do dishes the old-fashioned way might also be contributing to the uptick in allergies. Who knew that washing dishes could be good for you?

  • Daily Reads: The Barbie Vagina

    Daily Reads: The Barbie Vagina

    If the title of today’s Daily Read didn’t get your attention, then perhaps this will: “In 2013, the most recent year for which statistics are available, more than 5,000 labiaplasties were performed in the United States. That may not seem like a huge number, but it’s an astounding 44% increase over just one year prior, making labiaplasty the second fastest growing plastic surgery that year.” This fascinating statistic comes from an article on Alternet by Kali Holloway. Labiaplasty is a form of plastic surgery in which women have their inner labia – the inner lips of their vagina – cut and shaped to be more aesthetically appealing. The article attributes this to a rise in “perfect” genitalia being showcased in pornography. In recent years, both male and female porn actors have shaved and shaped their pubic areas to reveal more of their genitals, and with this trend has come an uptick in surgeries among women who perceive their vaginas as deviating from the porn standard, which values a smooth, hairless, and small-lipped vagina – the Barbie vagina. I find this fascinating for multiple reasons, not least of which is the fact that a smooth, “pure” vagina is one of the goals of female genital cutting (FGC), which is practiced in multiple places around the world. I teach about this practice in my cultural anthropology classes to help students learn about cultural relativity. Of course we find FGC to be horrifying – especially because it is associated with men’s control over women’s sexuality and behavior, and the young girls who are subjected to it are not given any choice. The cultural relativity part doesn’t mean we have to accept this practice; it just means that we need to try to understand it from the perspective of its practitioners rather than judging it from our own cultural standpoint (this is a complicated subject so I won’t go into it here; just suffice to say that exercising cultural relativity does not mean finding a practice acceptable). In any case, I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees an uncomfortable parallel with voluntary labiaplasty and FGC. In my classes, I typically juxtapose FGC with voluntary plastic surgeries such as breast implants. Now, I’ll be able to use labiaplasties as the example instead and ask my students why they are different from FGC. I’m sure it will generate some vigorous and thoughtful discussion.

    The Labiaplasty Boom: Why Are Women Desperate for the Perfect Vagina?