Hasta La Gadget!

In these days of social, political, and ecological gloom, it’s easy to become cynical. Everyday we are bombarded with news of racial prejudice, religious intolerance, economic inequality and xenophobia. Donald Trump, a man who is unabashedly racist, homophobic and misogynistic is about to become the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States. In the UK, a majority of British voters have opted to leave the European Union. Many of them appear to be unaware of the economic and social consequences of their vote.

As scholars it’s hard to know how to confront these dismal events in the world. How do we discuss ongoing problems that threaten to shred the global social fabric and bring widespread social, political and economic chaos.

Is there a measure of well being to be found in the world? Is there space for wonder?

In cynical moments when I need to ponder the wonders of human existence, I think about the work of Edith Turner, a monumental anthropologist who died on June 18th of this year, one day after her 95th birthday. In all of her work Edie, as her friends, students, and colleagues knew her, succeeded in describing what is special about the human condition.

In 1985 Edie Turner returned to Zambia in South Central Africa to continue the ethnographic research she had shared with her husband, the late Victor Turner, one of the great anthropologists of the 20th century. During a curing ceremony among the Ndembu people, the religious rituals of whom the Turners described in a series of classic books, Edie learned about the importance of understanding Ndembu rituals in Ndembu terms. In her book Experiencing Ritual Edie wrote about opening herself to the sensibilities of the Ndembu world. Witnessing that curing ceremony Edie wrote about being able to see…” a six-inch blob–a kind of plasma or gray spherical ghost–emerging from the patient’s back”. The spiritual extraction of what the Ndembu call Ihamba, a dead hunter’s tooth, healed the Ndembu patient. For us, the passage takes us to the edge of the possible and challenges our sense of reality. It compels us to think deeply about the human condition, about what is important in our lives and in our work.

Following the publication of Experiencing Ritual in 1992, when Edie was in her early seventies, she began to study healing rituals among a variety of peoples, publishing important works on the reality of spirits, on the nature of spirituality and on healers among the Iñupiat people in Northern Alaska.

For me her most important ideas are found in her final book Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy, which she published in 2011 when she was in her early nineties. In the first paragraph of this book, Edie deftly tackled the unenviable task of defining something as elusive as communitas, a silent and sudden sense of social bonding. She wrote:

…The characteristics of communitas show it to be almost beyond strict definition, with almost endless variations. Communitas often appears unexpectedly. It has to do with a sense felt by a group of people when their life together takes on full meaning….Communitas can only be conveyed through stories….

Here Edie tapped into something extraordinarily significant: the power of narrative to connect writers to readers, the power of narrative, in the words of the psychologist Jerome Bruner, to construct realities–a narrative construction of a reality that is irreducible to formulae to or a set of abstract theoretical principles.

There is something about narrative that can convey to readers the mystery of the ineffable or the wonder of, as Edie would put it, collective joy. Even so, anthropologists, like most scholars, are trained to tell and not to show, to denote rather to evoke. Edie’s work compels us to wonder what is missed through such academic socialization. As teachers and writers many of us are hesitant to take thematic or representational risks. In this domain Edie’s life work is a beacon of inspirational light. Evoking the specter of communitas, Edie wrote:

…This book….tackles communitas, togetherness itself, taking the reader to the edge of the precipice of knowledge–and beyond, over the barrier of the scientists’ analysis and into experience itself. Light dawns on what the real thing is, and we feel lucky it exists. Then we can make discoveries.

The stories of communitas that Edie recounted in her writing not only defined a place of togetherness but also the nebulous space between things. As such communitas shows us the way to an arena in which we can sometimes experience a rare feeling: collective joy.

When I discuss Edie’s life work, I don’t think about reviews, or critiques, or citations. Unlike most academic work, Edie Turner’s contributions to anthropology and to humanistic scholarship provide us a framework for thinking about well-being-in-the-world. Her clear prose and conceptual daring have inspired many of us to stretch our imagination and extend our sensibilities to the outer limits of the possible. In so doing, Edie’s work moves us to explore the unknown, the indefinable, the indeterminate, a path that is not always easy to follow. Despite the difficulties we encounter on this path, Edie Turner has shown us a way forward. In her life and work she marshaled the courage to explore the powerful indeterminacies that you find in the silence between two notes of music, or in the creative incomprehension you find between two cultures, or in the conceptual turbulence you find between spirit and reality. Indeed, Edie Turner’s celebration of social life guides us to a place that has deepened our professional and personal well-being-in-the world.

In the end, Edie’s notion of collective joy is a tonic for contemporary social life. It is a model for reaching our students and extending to the public our important insights about social life. Her joy of living the anthropological life is a model for being well in the world–a model that can bring us a measure of comfort as we confront the imponderables of our turbulent times.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Whether you’re leaving your cat alone for a weekend, or just want to keep your pets satisfied (i.e. quiet) on mornings when you’re sleeping in, Amazon’s deeply discounting a bunch of PetSafe automatic feeders and drinking fountains, today only in Amazon’s Gold Box.

Read more…

A rumor is floating around that suggest Google is ready to make it easier for buyers of its Nexus devices to get support when it’s needed. As it stands now, support involves reading support documents and a live chat session with support. If the rumor is correct, Google is now working on a live support app. That app is tipped … Continue reading

There is no putting Humpty back.

After last week’s vote, threat by referenda is the order of the day for the Euro and the EU–with calls in France, the Netherlands, Portugal amongst others, and forthcoming in Italy in the Autumn–regardless of what the Brits do from here.

Thus, Britain needs to prepare for what it has unleashed, because things have unravelled fast–in the UK and Europe politically, and in markets globally.

To that end, note that had the vote shares differed just a tad, the weekend-long Remain brouhaha about decision by a minority of eligible voters, Leave lies, and a new vote subject to new rules would instead be completely still. So it is all worse than gracelessness in defeat; it is the presumption of entitlement, rejected so roundly by the result itself, obliviously and self-rightously writ large. It needs to stop.

And for every mocking complaint about the vacuity and inconsistencies in Leave planning for the day after, ask why Remain, possessing every advantage of preparation, timing, foreign allies, and government, proved incapable of conveying them. Could it be, perhaps, that the fault lay with their own shortcomings–as reflected in prior Eurosceptic records long insouciant with economic “truths”, such as austerity and migration targets? Inadequacies of leadership are, sadly, all around.

So to start serious damage control, Remain needs to get off its wounded perch. Carping is only seriously aggravating matters.

But Boris has a central role too.

There are six matters to which he should attend immediately (today) if he is to get the job of global damage control underway.

First, he should unreservedly condemn every act of racism in the UK since the vote, saying that the point was not to shut out the world but to take a fresh place in it. So intolerance and crime have no blessing and the police have his full backing for any prosecutions. That would set his tone as inclusive.

Second, he should unreservedly affirm his confidence in Governor Mark Carney. The case Mr. Farage and others make for review has no standing, now or later. The bank’s independence is essential to stabilizing markets now, and its mandates for inflation and financial stability remain valid. That would set his tone as serious.

Third, he should affirm that were he to be elected leader of the party, his first step would be to activate Article 50, formally initiating UK departure from the EU, and his second would be to call a General Election. Thus, rather than a neverendum, the election would debate Brexit terms. This would set his tone as decisive.

Fourth, in proposing a Brexit strategy, he should prioritize services access to the single market and grandfathering all rights for EU workers already in the UK, seeking controls only on those who may come in future, with policing via employers and service providers rather than new border controls. UK participation in the CAP would end and these resources, not “EU budget contributions”, would be redirected to high priorities within the UK budget. And his default approach for non-EU trading agreements would be to replicate the status quo. Whether or not he gets all these, this would set his tone as stabilizing, free-trading, and Merkel-friendly.

Fifth, and accordingly, he should urge the Scots and Northern Irish to stick with the UK. A Brexit deal along his proposed lines would secure the essence of both nations’ economic and border concerns. This would set his tone as British, not English.

And last, he should set out his stall on the UK fiscal framework for coming years to the responsible left (yes left) of Cameron-Osborne. With UKIP hemmed in by the voting system, Labour openly self-harming, and the prevailing fiscal framework discredited, unrealistic, and overtaken by Brexit, he can draw votes from Labour-Leave and set fiscal policy credibly and coherently, even if UKippers abandon him due to migration. This would establish a One Nation tone, and put much needed daylight between himself and his predecessors on fiscal credibility.

Though late, it would all strike a very different tone.

Will he do it? His record gives no ground for confidence that he will. But, who knows, perhaps one of his mates holded up with him in Oxfordshire yesterday can bend him in this direction, very fast.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Powerball winner Mark Hill and his family continue to pay it forward in a huge way. They built a state-of-the-art fire station for Camden Point, Missouri, because volunteer firefighters there saved his father’s life twice.

“My wife and I were able to pay them back,” Hill told KMBC.

The building, which houses the ambulances and fire trucks and includes a training room, will be dedicated on July 16.

When the Hill family pledged to finance the station for the tiny town after winning the lottery, Camden Point fire chief Walt Stubbs said he wasn’t surprised.

“Money changes a lot of people,” Stubbs told CNN. “They are just good people and are willing to help others.”

The station is merely the latest in the Hills’ civic philanthropy. According to previous reports, the family donated money to build a new ball field and acquired land for a new sewage treatment plant. The Hills even established a scholarship fund at the high school they attended.

In November 2012, the Hill family split a jackpot of $588 million, choosing to receive a lump take-home sum of $136.5 million.

Despite the sudden wealth, the Hills reportedly decided to remain humble. KMBC noted that this was Mark Hill’s first first televised interview since the lottery aftermath. He said he’d rather be changing the oil in his car but did express pride in his contribution.

“I’m proud to know there’s an ambulance service right here, I mean, how many towns of 500 people have an ambulance service that’s manned 24-7?” he said. “…I’m proud to be part of that.” 

H/T Uproxx

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.