Me.

Upon reading the afterword to Letter to a Christian Nation I got to thinking about blood sacrifice. It's not necessary for you to read this link, and I'm not even necessarily wanting a discussion about the link; I'm just giving context.

Here's where my head is right now, though. In the days when Judaism and Christianity were having their major cultural foundations laid, the people depicted in the Scriptures in question were certainly a product of their times. Those people had certain expectations about how exchanges with supernatural beings worked. There was an unquestioned assumption about the rightful place of blood sacrifice that we really don't tend to have today. The assumption was that blood was a (literal or symbolic) manifestation of life itself, and that giving this to a divine figure would please it.

From this widespread assumption seems to spring everything from Abel's sheep to Abraham's son to Jesus himself. Without the assumption that blood sacrifice and offerings of live creatures is pleasing to a deity, the whole system falls apart. It seems to me that part of the reason why the "Jesus Christ died for your sins" narrative falls flat for a lot of people is that a lot of people just don't understand anymore why there was anything about that in "the rules" to begin with. They don't even understand why YHWH wants blood, let alone how big a deal it was that his own son was offered up. The "why" of it is lost because we aren't supposed to give blood to our gods anymore. Aside: if you think blood sacrifice is still considered part of polite religious worship, consider how afraid people are of Santeria for doing what Jewish and Christian scriptures clearly state gods want us to do.

For me personally, this means that while the "God spilled the blood of his only-begotten son to pay the blood debt humanity owed for their sins" narrative had broad resonance at the time (because basically every culture shared the assumption that a sin was a debt owed to the gods which could be repaid in blood), it has no meaning or place in societies where blood sacrifice is considered something that "savages" (word used with full scare quotes because I'm an anthropologist and can't say "savages" unironically anymore) do. If Christianity is dying, it is because the most central assumption that makes the whole thing work just doesn't have any relevance anymore.

Now, I'm anticipating somebody with a Christian background saying, "Well, the crucifixion was such a badass sacrifice that it ended the time of blood sacrifice, and nobody ever need repay YHWH in blood again." I think this is dodging the issue. The issue is that your potential converts probably don't understand why there ever needed to be a sacrifice in the first place, because they weren't raised to believe that blood sacrifice is Just What People Do. These people need to be convinced first that blood sacrifice is a natural and desirable thing, and I don't think Christians can make that case. Please feel free to prove me wrong if I'm underestimating you.

If the rule is that divine powers can be propitiated with blood, whose rule is that? Did YHWH make that rule, or is it a rule totally external to YHWH by which YHWH is bound? Seems most likely to me that it's the latter. It's a rule external to YHWH by which YHWH is bound because that's how humans thought they had to be interacting with gods. YHWH is a god. Therefore we have to interact with it by giving it blood. If we really seriously screw up big time or just really want to say "I love you" in a big way, we have to give YHWH particularly awesome blood.

For ancient people this was a serious "well duh" sort of a thing, but lots of people don't think like this anymore. Even the idea that someone else can rightly pay for the sins of another is considered unjust and barbaric by lots and lots of people. For Christianity to remain relevant, then the practice of valuing blood sacrifice has to be explained, justified, and thereby preserved for your religion to even be intelligible to modern people. Can you?

I've been trying to puzzle out why symbols and religious narratives from my own heritage don't really resonate with me as well as the kind of things I've been taught not to touch (since cultural appropriation makes one a jerk, and I fully respect that).

I think it's because I spend my life kicking up a fit over various injustices, and a lot of narratives from the religions I can reasonably use symbols and narratives from are from... well, people who look like me. White people. People who are used to being large and in charge, and you can kind of tell from looking at the stories. Nobody stands up to anybody else, it seems, because if you start teaching people to do that... well, then, white people might stop being in charge of everything! Wouldn't that be awful, better not even go there (unless we're going to give them a white savior so that we'll still be in charge in the end but overall it's just a dodgy thing to do, encouraging independence).

I identify as a woman with a lot of symbols and archetypes and mythological figures that--as a white person--I don't feel like I should be making a part of my life. Damn you, intersectionality! *shakes her fist*

If American culture weren't so influenced by Christianity--which has something of a dearth of idolizable female figures compared to, say, Vodou or even Islam--I'd have an easier time looking within my own cultural context for something larger-than-life to look up to. But so much of trying to make the world a better place involves trying to be less of an asshole as a white person in addition to standing up for myself as a woman, and I want to do the latter without undermining the former one, y'know?

I feel like the women Americans are taught to look up to and emulate aren't independent women, whereas you get figures like Ezili Danto and Khadija who are told about, who get shit done despite what women are "supposed" to do. Who do we get? The Virgin Mary, who placidly accepts being impregnated by a deity even though it could well ruin her own life, and even though she's doomed to lose her son under terrible circumstances. We get Mother Theresa, who spends her whole life in (admittedly admirable) service to others. Then a bunch of other women who didn't do anything but be married to men who did things.

I guess people from heavily-Christian backgrounds can look at Lilith and do some reclaiming, sure, but that's a Rabbinical tradition that I don't really have much claim to. Coming from a Christian background doesn't mean that midrash belongs to me.

Maybe it's just a matter of finding real women. Women who existed, and who did larger-than-life things even if they weren't mythological larger-than-life figures. We had plenty of women who went out and kicked ass, and they had even fewer people to look to than I do. Along with the whole rest of the legacy they left behind, they also left themselves as role models. I suppose for now that will have to be enough.

I just get tired of having to identify the willingness to say "fuck you" to oppression with male figures in myth and religion, at least in this culture, the culture I have a right to draw from.

Real women do that shit all the time. Where are our stories? Where are our myths? When do we get to be archetypes, too?


Edit (3/10/2010): Thank you to all who commented. I'm still chewing on things, which is why I haven't responded to you. However, I really appreciate you taking the time to give me your thoughts, and you have been helpful.

I've been trying to puzzle out why symbols and religious narratives from my own heritage don't really resonate with me as well as the kind of things I've been taught not to touch (since cultural appropriation makes one a jerk, and I fully respect that).

I think it's because I spend my life kicking up a fit over various injustices, and a lot of narratives from the religions I can reasonably use symbols and narratives from are from... well, people who look like me. White people. People who are used to being large and in charge, and you can kind of tell from looking at the stories. Nobody stands up to anybody else, it seems, because if you start teaching people to do that... well, then, white people might stop being in charge of everything! Wouldn't that be awful, better not even go there (unless we're going to give them a white savior so that we'll still be in charge in the end but overall it's just a dodgy thing to do, encouraging independence).

I identify as a woman with a lot of symbols and archetypes and mythological figures that--as a white person--I don't feel like I should be making a part of my life. Damn you, intersectionality! *shakes her fist*

If American culture weren't so influenced by Christianity--which has something of a dearth of idolizable female figures compared to, say, Vodou or even Islam--I'd have an easier time looking within my own cultural context for something larger-than-life to look up to. But so much of trying to make the world a better place involves trying to be less of an asshole as a white person in addition to standing up for myself as a woman, and I want to do the latter without undermining the former one, y'know?

I feel like the women Americans are taught to look up to and emulate aren't independent women, whereas you get figures like Ezili Danto and Khadija who are told about, who get shit done despite what women are "supposed" to do. Who do we get? The Virgin Mary, who placidly accepts being impregnated by a deity even though it could well ruin her own life, and even though she's doomed to lose her son under terrible circumstances. We get Mother Theresa, who spends her whole life in (admittedly admirable) service to others. Then a bunch of other women who didn't do anything but be married to men who did things.

I guess people from heavily-Christian backgrounds can look at Lilith and do some reclaiming, sure, but that's a Rabbinical tradition that I don't really have much claim to. Coming from a Christian background doesn't mean that midrash belongs to me.

Maybe it's just a matter of finding real women. Women who existed, and who did larger-than-life things even if they weren't mythological larger-than-life figures. We had plenty of women who went out and kicked ass, and they had even fewer people to look to than I do. Along with the whole rest of the legacy they left behind, they also left themselves as role models. I suppose for now that will have to be enough.

I just get tired of having to identify the willingness to say "fuck you" to oppression with male figures in myth and religion, at least in this culture, the culture I have a right to draw from.

Real women do that shit all the time. Where are our stories? Where are our myths? When do we get to be archetypes, too?


Edit (3/10/2010): Thank you to all who commented. I'm still chewing on things, which is why I haven't responded to you. However, I really appreciate you taking the time to give me your thoughts, and you have been helpful.

Fossil Discovery Is Heralded

In what could prove to be a landmark discovery, a leading paleontologist said scientists have dug up the 47 million-year-old fossil of an ancient primate whose features suggest it could be the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes and humans.

Anthropologists have long believed that humans evolved from ancient ape-like ancestors. Some 50 million years ago, two ape-like groups walked the Earth. One is known as the tarsidae, a precursor of the tarsier, a tiny, large-eyed creature that lives in Asia. Another group is known as the adapidae, a precursor of today's lemurs in Madagascar.

Based on previously limited fossil evidence, one big debate had been whether the tarsidae or adapidae group gave rise to monkeys, apes and humans. The latest discovery bolsters the less common position that our ancient ape-like ancestor was an adapid, the believed precursor of lemurs.

Holy shit awesome.

Sometimes I wish that people would believe I'm qualified to make statements about the subject of my Bachelor's Thesis. I specifically studied authority in online roleplaying communities. I should be their motherfucking expert consultant.

To be more clear...

Dear Hidden Realms:

CC: TGC, Unicorn's Visions, Terrawin, and everywhere else I have been that has decided I'm a nitpicking troublemaker with no respect for proper forum-staff authority:



I spent a year studying the use of authority in online communities. I satisfied the conditions for a research grant and wrote my Bachelor's Thesis on the subject. When I tell you that your behavior is causing X or Y among your members, or that X or Y member is or isn't making a valid point, understand that I am not merely coming to the discussion as a member. I am coming to the discussion as an administrator of three roleplaying forums with very different social climates, and as a scholar who has done research in this area.

Keep this in mind if you are not drawing on years of study into the dynamics of a community and formal anthropological theory regarding authority, its uses, and the reactions of those who do not have authority to those who do. We both have personal background experience with running forums, but odds are only one of us actually has some notable qualifications in the area as well.

In short, if we disagree, you're going to have to actually make a sensible argument to convince me. I will not assume that you know better than I do without one.

So start thinking and expressing, kids.




Love and peace,

Ashley

P.S. I am no longer amused by your tendency to make me staff out of respect for my alleged insight, evenhandedness, and honesty and then to rapidly decide you hate me because I'm examining your behavior the way you were hoping I'd examine everyone else's for your benefit. I had no idea there were so many of you out there.

Sometimes I wish that people would believe I'm qualified to make statements about the subject of my Bachelor's Thesis. I specifically studied authority in online roleplaying communities. I should be their motherfucking expert consultant.

To be more clear...

Dear Hidden Realms:

CC: TGC, Unicorn's Visions, Terrawin, and everywhere else I have been that has decided I'm a nitpicking troublemaker with no respect for proper forum-staff authority:



I spent a year studying the use of authority in online communities. I satisfied the conditions for a research grant and wrote my Bachelor's Thesis on the subject. When I tell you that your behavior is causing X or Y among your members, or that X or Y member is or isn't making a valid point, understand that I am not merely coming to the discussion as a member. I am coming to the discussion as an administrator of three roleplaying forums with very different social climates, and as a scholar who has done research in this area.

Keep this in mind if you are not drawing on years of study into the dynamics of a community and formal anthropological theory regarding authority, its uses, and the reactions of those who do not have authority to those who do. We both have personal background experience with running forums, but odds are only one of us actually has some notable qualifications in the area as well.

In short, if we disagree, you're going to have to actually make a sensible argument to convince me. I will not assume that you know better than I do without one.

So start thinking and expressing, kids.




Love and peace,

Ashley

P.S. I am no longer amused by your tendency to make me staff out of respect for my alleged insight, evenhandedness, and honesty and then to rapidly decide you hate me because I'm examining your behavior the way you were hoping I'd examine everyone else's for your benefit. I had no idea there were so many of you out there.

I was sent an email by the American Anthropological Association about proposed revisions to their ethics guidelines. Check here for specific revisions they're looking at making. Anthropologists have worked with the military before, but it's becoming a more and more pressing concern. I can't give any better a run-down than this article, so I refer you there if you're curious. I'll probably refer back to this latter article a bunch of times because it's great.

I'm just putting down my opinion on the matter.

I was very interested at first to learn about the Human Terrain System. The idea is to have experts in culture on the ground to inform the military about the people they're dealing with. On the surface this sounds fantastic, and my first thought was, "Great. Maybe now our military can stop acting like total ignorant boobs everywhere they go. They'll have someone around who actually cares about understanding culture. What could go wrong?"

Well, I hadn't thought it through.

First off, anthropology started out as a component of colonialism. Imperialists brought experts on the local savages with them, so that they could better subjugate them. I assumed this kind of thing doesn't happen anymore until I realized one day into my Religions of the World 101 course that 2/3 of my classmates were there so that they could be better missionaries. That's right. They wanted to understand local religions better so they'd be more effective in supplanting local culture.

This is disrespectful. Imperialism kinda makes you a dick. I shouldn't have to point out that disrespect of one's informants (the people you're studying) is also unethical. They're helping you with your research, your career. If you can't actually give them something in return (other than the great gift of your superior culture), at least try not to hurt them.

Hurting your informants sucks for many reasons. First is obviously that it makes you a dick. You're hurting people who helped you. The second is that it hurts your field. If you give anthropologists a reputation for being dicks in a discipline that depends heavily on establishing trust with informants, you are hurting your colleagues' chances of doing research as well. If your colleagues are doing research in dangerous areas, it becomes even more important that they have the trust and esteem of their informants, because their informants are also protecting them. So you're also potentially compromising the safety of your colleagues, just because you had to go and be a dick.

The upshot of having anthropologists involved with the military is that whatever credibility anthropologists bring is going to reflect well on the military. They'll look better with us than without us, because at least for a while they'll have people around to tell them how to do stuff right. The downside of this is that their ignorance and destructiveness combined with the imperialist mode of our foreign policy makes anthropologists look worse, which means the credibility we're lending troops probably won't last forever. They'll look better for a while, but they'll drag us down and then we won't be able to do our work without building our reputation all over again.

These are all ethical considerations anthropologists have to figure out for themselves, of course. The AAA Ethics Code doesn't have rules so much as what you'd call guidelines. Each individual scholar has to decide whether their work is ethical or unethical given these guidelines, and there's always room for debate. Debate is too much fun (and far too important) to ever get rid of.

Here's another problem with working for the military: Anthropologists need the freedom (and the power) to make decisions about their own work. When an anthropologist is doing fieldwork for any entity (whether a corporation or a government or a foundation, whatever), we give up some of our autonomy. We lose a little of our room to veto things that we view as unethical. However, if we're working for some academic body or other, odds are we're working with and for other scholars who have some idea of why anthropological ethics are important.

You cannot do this as well with the military. If you're working for them, you're working for them. End of line. It's a much more authoritarian structure in which people with power command people with less. If you're a civilian anthropologist, this means you. This is a problem in any situation where you have experts under the thumb of non-experts, and most of the time it's merely annoying or counterproductive. But in the military, anthropologists can get people hurt if we don't have the ability to enforce our own ethics on our own work. As the article I mentioned above states, "Some scholars have been deeply alarmed by reports that social science work has been used by the military to figure out how to degrade or humiliate prisoners from Muslim nations."

I've already explained why hurting your informants is bad. Now I've established that the military can force you to participate in the harm of your informants. This is bad. It's bad for your ethical obligation to your informants, it's bad for your credibility as a scholar (and the credibility of everyone in your discipline), and in the end it's even bad for the military, since once they've squandered all the credibility you once had, they lose you as a resource to bolster their own poor reputation.

"But Ashley," you say. "Not all anthropologists are working in Muslim nations. This isn't just about the Middle East." Quite right. Just because Iraq is the big troublesome example doesn't mean it's the only one that matters. Any country with a foreign military presence is likely to be experiencing a great deal of political pressure. Political pressure from the military power on the local powers creates social and cultural pressure, and this causes problems with informed consent. The more social and cultural pressure your informant is under to accomodate and even obey you as a member of an occupying force, the more careful you need to be in getting their consent lest you inadvertently use your position to coerce them into doing what you want. This makes you a dick, and being a dick is generally unethical.

This means that even an anthropologist who is working with the military to ensure greater access to vaccinations and other medical services needs to be wary of whether their ties to power are pressuring their informants to do things they wouldn't do otherwise. Coercion is bad, mmkay?

I think in light of all this that work with the military is generally going to entail compromising a scholar's ethics. There are individual cases where it won't, in which case the opportunity to educate military leaders and help inform their decisions is absolutely worth taking. If anthropology can be done ethically with the US military, it's probably our responsibility as scholars to do it. However, it's so frighteningly likely that military work will compromise a scholar's ethics that I think the AAA is right to warn their people against it.

I'll be spending eight weeks this summer at an NSF-funded archaeological field school. They only chose 14 people, and they picked me.
Also nice is the $300/week stipend. 300x8=2400. That's a lot of money to take off of next year's college costs. That may just save my ass. It might get me ahead enough that if I keep my wits about me, I can stay ahead of my bills.

Fantastic. Also, Strawtown, IN is a hell of a lot closer to Dayton than MI is. Closer to Brian=good.

This is a research paper that I wrote for anthropology about part of the convention. Forgive the formatting if you please. It wasn't built for blog publishing, but if you'd like to read it anyway, you are more than welcome.

( In which Wolfwood performs a wedding )