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Having spent much of the summer in South Africa, it seems that cultural and political life in the United States has sunk into a surreal funk.  Events like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Islamophobia surrounding the Islamic center that is scheduled to built two blocks from Ground Zero, and the numbing ignorance reflected by the stunning percentage of Americans who “know” that President Obama is a Muslim all cry out for a reasoned interpretation.

It seems pathetic that in the richest and most scientifically advanced society in the world no one seems to know what to do. No one seems to understand why we have lapsed into a kind of cultural hysteria. In the Gulf disaster, BP seems beyond its element. Local officials in Louisiana and Mississippi, regions that will long be ecologically impacted by the spill, perhaps for several generations, have angrily expressed their powerlessness. And the Federal Government, reacting to the BP disaster and citing its lack of “know-how,” mounted what seemed a tepid “what can we do” response. What’s more, who can we account for the massive and hate-filled Islamophobia is sweeping across the United States?

The political pundits and journalists have have their various takes on the Gulf Oil disaster and rampant spread of Islamophobia, but for me, a cultural anthropologist who has conducted research among rural peasants in the Republic of Niger and West African immigrants in NYC, the response to the disaster speaks to a much larger and infinitely more profound cultural question. Given the hyper-real speed and complexity of contemporary social life, we have entered an epoch in which a culture of expediency has taken root. In the culture of expediency we take the shortest path between Point A and Point B, reaching our destination in the quickest and least problematic way. In so doing, we speed along in a the blur of the here and now. In so doing we arrive at partial solutions and partial truths, but when things get truly difficult, we seem lost.

Perhaps it is old fashioned of me to suggest a slower more thorough journey toward excellence in a time when the expedient solution or the expedient path is frowned upon.  Is it so terrible when it takes years for a person to master a skill and apply it skillfully. Among the Songhay people of Niger, specialists must apprentice many years to master their skill. My teacher of things Songhay, Adamu Jenitongo studied healing for 40 years before he began to practice his skills. The slow movment ha snot yet reached government or the academy. In my discipline of anthropology, for example, it is expedient to latch on to the moment’s theory or the subject of contemporary interest. This tendency sometimes means that we shut our eyes to the partially known past and ignore the future. In the slower environment, mastery of any skill takes time and the master’s greatest charged is to pass his or her knowledge to the next generation.

What mastery do we have today in our culture of expedience? If the response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is indicative, we have very little mastery at all. The wholesale ignorance of Islam suggest a lack of willingness to confront complex ideas and practices.  These tendencies rise to the surface in  an ongoing culture of expediency. And I’m afraid that our fast and furious pace will lead us a graduate social decline if not an unexpected crash.

The specter of debate about health care reform has significant social ramifications.  Much has been said about the lack of civility in the August discussions, especially in town hall meetings, about proposed health care reforms.  Rather than engaging in debate, spectators at town hall meetings have been shouting down their representatives, especially if the latter support some form of health care reform. cable television commentators have enjoyed the ruckus, to use President Obama’s phrase, which is obviously quite good for ratings.  There has been much talk about mis-information, and some disdain, but not enough in my view, to folks who feel compelled to bring firearms to these public meetings.  we have heard of old folks who received Medicare, a government program, who are against goverment-run health care, not to mention the famous death panels, claims of Nazism and social movements paid for by healthcare interests and those who want to derail President Obama’s agenda.  From CNN we get the hyperbolic: “August, the make or break month for health care.”

This hype goes on and on, but it pushes into the background a more serious issue–that of the valorization of ignorance in contemporary American culture. There is such incendiary pablum on the airwave, pablum that is taken as “tribal truth,” which, even if it is patently false, is still maintained. Such a sad process makes me think that a portion of our population has been drugged with less than half-truths.  The same process underscores just how ill-informed our population has become.  If my students are indicative–and they are a tad more curious than most of their fellow citizens–then we’ve become a nation of people who lack curiosity about the world, who find thinking to be painful, who don’t take time to read or, God-forbid, have a critical reflection about the world around them.  When I read that only a small percentage of Americans have passports and that a surprising percentage of our fellow citizens have never been outside the US and have little interest in traveling to other countries and knowing a tad more about the world, it reinforces my impression, reinforced by many of undergraduate students, that we suffer from a tragic parochialism, which, in itself, is a sign of social decline.  

I worry about the future and hope that my pessimistic assessment of our culture of ignorance will be proven wrong.  Time will tell.

Thinking aback on my recent trip to Niger, I wonder about the weird juxtapositions of the haves and have nots.  Why do the haves, whose relative wealth should grant them some sense of satisfaction seem so riddled with stress, uncertainty and unhappiness? Why do the have nots whose abject poverty should make them utterly miserable, seem so carefree, so certain about their choices, and so smilingly happy?  I over simplify, of course.  There are happy rich people and people so utterly poor that they don’t know they will manage to live.  And yet, the contrasts between haves and have nots are sometimes stunning.

Here in the United States bad economic news has made us glum, perhaps a tad morose.  Millions of people have lost their jobs.  Housing foreclosures have put people, once solidly in the middle-class on the streets or in fast-expanding tent cities.  Here lack of resources precipitates stress. How will I pay my bills if my salary is cut, or worse yet, if I lose my job?  Where will I live if the landlord raises the rent?  How we my family stay warm when the power company shuts off the heat because we can’t afford to pay for our energy.  The way things are set up in the US anyone can be one accident away or one illness or one job loss away from poverty’s doorstep.  And if we should find ourselves confronting poverty, we tend to take it out on ourselves. Somehow failure is an individual responsibility.  Our heads hang low.  We blame ourselves for our limitations.  We lose ourselves in too much drink or too many drugs.

But what do we know of poverty in the US?  There are, of course, pockets of abject poverty in the inner cities as well as in rural areas.  Most Americans, of course, have little direct experience with the poor, who, for the most part, remain invisible.  What do most Americans know about the texture of life in American inner cities or on the plains or in the valleys of rural poverty?  Not much, I’m afraid to say.  And even if we did know American poverty first hand, how would it compare to the poverty you find in the countries that constitute West Africa?

In Niger, which is the second poorest nation in the world, the average individual earns about $200 a year–less than one dollar a day!!! Imagine what that means.  It means that you don’t necessarily eat three meals a day. It means you have little protection from the elements, which in Niger, means heat, dust, dirt and killer diseases like malaria and meningitis. It means that if you get sick, you probably won’t have the resources to treat your illness, which boils down the startling statistic that roughly one-half the babies born in Niger survive the first five years of life.

Most people in Niamey, the crowded capital city live in cramped quarters–mud brick and cement compounds.  In Niamey ,at least, there is running water, a reasonably functioning sewer system, pharmacies that sell medicines (if you can pay for them).  There are also wide paved boulevards and dusty dirt tracks filled with cars, trucks, camels, donkeys.  Niamey is a city of stark contrasts.  Along one major street you find hundreds of parked cars (along the dusty side of the road (Toyotas, Hondas and Mercedes) for sale.  On the other side of street, you find lines of mud brick houses in front of which are tables on which are sold individual cigarettes (it’s too expensive to buy a pack), chewing gum, and pieces of hard candy.  People dressed in rags beg in front of these tables asking passersby for a few coins so they can buy a piece of bread.  What do they think when they see a Mercedes for sale?

When you leave Niamey and venture into the bush, there are fewer such contrasts.  Niamey seems to be ringed with trash fields where garbage and plastic waste is dumped.  Further out, the population thins out and you come upon isolated villages consisting of mud brick or thatch houses.  On one trip we passed a young boy, no more than 10 years of age, in the middle of nowhere.  He wore only a tattered pair of shorts.  As he walked along side the road, he rolled a bicycle wheel–his toy. When he looked at us in our van, he waved and smiled.  Who knows where he lived or how much he had eaten that day?  And yet, he could still manage a warm infectious smile–the portrait, perhaps, of a have not.

This kind of portrait is not limited to the empty spaces of the Nigerien bush.  You can find it in Niamey just outside the entrance to the Grand Hotel of Niger, one of the more exclusive spaces in Niger’s capital city, a place where elite visitors pass much of their time in Niger.  There, you find a group of polio victims who live on the streets of Niamey.  They are perched on the seats of their hand-propelled bicycles.  They pump their arms and move forward on their bikes and say hello, with big, beaming smiles on their faces.  You talk with them, perhaps give them a few coins, and they laugh and joke with you and with one another.  There are hundreds of street kids in Niamey, many of them physically  impaired. But if you talk with them, as I did many times during my visit to Niger, you discover incredibly reslient people who do not resent their most difficult station in life.

Is it too much of a simplification to ask whether the haves have something to learn from the have nots?

In upcoming posts, I’ll discuss a thriving market of trade in the impoverished context of contemporary Niger

There is much talk about the economic doldrums that have slowed global economies to a crawl.  People are suffering.  Tent cities have surfaced in Sacramento, California and Seattle, Washington.  In Indiana, people wait in long lines to received donations of food.  These are images that hark back to the dark days of the Great Depression.  My parents lives through tough times, and the struggles they experienced forever shaped their view of the world.  They managed their money with great care. They were loath to waste resources.  

How have we come to these dire economic crossroads yet again?  There are numerous economic theories that suggest the hows and whys of economic downturns.  Some people suggest there is no rhyme or reason for economic downturns; they simply come and go in cycles.  Other people blame lack of government regulation and laissez-faire neoliberal beliefs about economic processes.  There are sophisticated economic theories about rational choice s well as the ramifications of government stimulus packages.  

No one really knows, as far as I can tell, if one theory truly explains the irrationalities of the stock market or the dynamics of housing’s free fall into a deep bottomless pit.  Maybe the economists who are planning our recovery really haven’t any idea of how we got here or how we extricate ourselves from the morass.  They talk a lot of mumbo jumbo and this process and that and sometimes they seem like oracles, speaking in a language that seems to make little sense.  Maybe all economics has become Voodoo-like, a smokescreen that gives us the illusion of control of a set of seemingly uncontrollable processes.

Although I usually don’t understand their professional pronouncements, I like most of the economists I know. They are pleasant people who have maybe lost their way.  From the perspective of classical economics, economic behavior is about macro and micro-processes that can be modeled and re-modeled into predictive theories. The problem is that economic processes are not essentially about abstract models; they are about social relationships that involve relations of trust and fears of betrayal, which depend upon ongoing economic and social relationships built up over many years of transactions.  From my vantage as an anthropologist, economic relations are about relations of exchange between trading partners.  How do you establish that relationship?  Once it is established, how do you reinforce and build that relationship? How do you maintain trust between trading partners?  How do you reassure a person who is nervous about extending credit or accepting credit?  These are not abstract matters; they are central elements in the construction of social relationships.  The human element is missing from our economic thinking, and until it is re-established, our economic ideas and our economic policies will be misguided.

In my next post, I will discuss my recent experiences of West African traders, who believe that economic success can only occur through the construction and reconstruction of viable social networks.

President Obama today signed an executive order authorizing the expansion of stem cell research, an act that gives hope to millions of people who live in what I like to call The Village of the Sick, people who suffer from illnesses and disorders for which there is no cure:  many cancers, auto-immune disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, and so on.  For people in this village, the idea of a cure is such a dim reality that news that someone, somewhere is trying to help gives us hope.  In my case, I have Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, a blood cancer for which there is, as yet, no cure.  NHL is a disease that can sometimes be managed for long periods of time.  Research is ongoing and there are many more treatment options today than there were in 2001 when I was diagnosed with NHL

Today is a winning day for millions of people who live in the Village of the Sick.  If you live in The Village of the Healthy, you take health for granted and illness is seen as a temporary nuisance.  You take a pill and in short order, your health (the absence of pain, the absence of symptoms, the absence of the specter of your mortality) is quickly restored.  If you live in The Village of the Sick, you can never forget that you live with our illness, you travel with it, you live with it.  Your illness becomes your companion and in some cases, people can derive unimaginable strength from your infirmity.  Yet no matter the strength of your adaptation to chronic disease, you still want to be cured, you still want to return to the Village of the Health, you hope against hope that a new discovery will sweeten your life and make it more normal.

Thank you President Obama for fueling the fire of that hope.  Your gesture will give millions of people in the Village of Sick a strong and silent hope for the future.  Thank you.

As some of you may know, February 18 was the 5th anniversary of Jean Rouch’s death in Niger. In route to a film festival in Tahoua, Niger, there was a car accident and Jean was the only person to die in the crash. Since then, there has been much written about Jean’s contributions to the cinema and anthropology. In Niger, his persona has reached mythic proportions. The French cultural center is named after him. The center’s library is esbalishing a collection of books by and about Jean. A media center is being developed. And the CCFN (Centre Culturel Franco-Nigerien) has been sponsoring the Caravan Jean Rouch in which Rouch’s longtime sidekick, Damoure Zika and a team from the cultural center take Jean’s films to the remote villages where they were shot, in some cases, more than 60 years ago. The films are shown to the grandchildren, in most cases, of the original subjects, and then Damoure elicits a general discussion. For many viewers, it was the first time they saw their grandparents, which moved them deeply.

Everyone I met in Niger talked about Jean in reverential tones as if he, as a respected ancestor, is listening to all the talk and making judgments about us down here in everyday life.

“Did you know him?” people asked me in a whisper.

“I did and we shared some very good times. If you had some time, I could tell you some terrific stories.”

As in many parts of Africa, ancestors here are seen as potential participants–for good and bad–in the everyday lives of the living. Offerings are sometimes made in expectation of a heavenly good turn. All of this, I think, pleases Jean, if he is up there listening. How many people are remembered after they die and for how long? In Jean’s case, he and his work will be seen and discussed for many generations to come–his being and spirit lives on in his work. Such a mythic status, moreover, makes him a figure of inspiration to a new generation of scholars–especially Nigerien scholars who are taking up the camera and who are begnnning to produce films of distinction. This fact makes Jean smile–beam with delight–where ever he might be, for his vision was never of the present; it was always focused on the future. And so, five years after his death, we can say without hesitation that the work goes on.

On the morning of February 18th I went to the Christian cemetrary to find Jean’s grave. The cemetary is a dry and sandy expanse just off the road to Kollo near the Terminus neighborhood in Niamey. Most of the gravesites are bare mounds marked with crosses. Jean’s has a tombstone and is covered with white marble squares. It is unobtrusively situated at the southern end of the cemetary and says: “Jean Rouch May 31, 1917-February 18, 2004. A modest palce that marks the passing of a great scholar and filmmaker.

As is the Songhay (and Jewish) custom, I took a stone and spoke to it from my heart. I wished Jean well and hoped that he would continue to watch over us to ensure that the work goes on. I placed the stone on the gravesite and walked into the dusty congestion of Niamey.

As soon as I get over my jet lag I will be posting several essays about my experiences in NIger during my February trip.

I have been visiting the Grand Marche on a daily basis.  It remains a vast square of intensive economic activity that is criss-crossed by a series of straight passageways.  In the center of this vast expanse is a police tower next to which are toilet facilities.  The market stalls that line the passageways are stuffed with goods–spices, hardware, cell phones, electronic equipment, glassware, cloth, carpets and much more.  You can’t walk quickly through the market as you have to weave your way around boys and girls, men and women who are hawking goods–sun glasses, phone cards that contain cell phone credit, grilled meat, costume jewelry and so on.  At any moment your walk might be interrupted by a cart, pulled by a teenager, loaded with hundreds of cartons filled with soap or some other product.  One section that struck my interest was the extremely narrow passage that cuts through the market’s pharmaceutical section.  It is so narrow that only one person can pass.  The men selling medicine sit in their cramped stalls, which are situated some three of four feet above the floor of the market. From there they sell skin cremes, antibiotics and other medicines at “market prices.”  Given the bustle of the market, you are hard-pressed to think that there is a global recession that has brought suffering to a very large group of people.  Given the the sheer bulk of goods, the idea that Niger is among the poorest of countries in the world drifts far away from you consciousness.  And yet, when you leave the market and see destitute lepers, polio victims, people with genetic deformities or those whose paralysis resulted from an improperly administered injection, that reality comes crashing down on your head.  And yet, amid this poverty, the people that I have encountered, beggars included, demonstrate an enviable vitality.  Even those beggars to whom I say:  Iri koy ma dogonaandi (”May God lighten your burden), which is a polite way of saying “I can’t give you a donation today,” respond with an enthusiastic “Amin.”  Their perseverance in the hot, dusty Nigerien capital is inspiring and renders insiginifcant the kind of existential complaints that I routinely put forward.

More reflections on the way, especially on the nature of fraternal and sororal warmth that one finds here in abundance.

After an almost 19-year absence, I have returned to Niger, specifically Niamey, to reconnect with a second home and ponder the changes that life has brought since my last visit in 1990. How curious it is to inhale the sensuousness of places that figure prominently in some of my books:  the light fading on the buttes and on the river as seen from the terrace at sunset at the Grand Hotel, the whir and whirl of le grande marche, the smells of roasting brochettes on the street,  the clutter of carts, donkeys, people, some poor and dressed in rags others resplendent in their embroidered outfits, the burn of the sun on the neck at midday, the warmth of talk and human contact.  People who seen me walking in the street and after almost 19 years, they called out my name, singing praises to God who enabled our paths to cross once again.  So it goes on this short visit in which I have also reconnected with men and women I met during fieldwork in New York City–all very existentially satisfying, an affirmation of life.

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