 Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to simulation. I'm your host Alan Saki And we are on site at the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting. We are now sitting down with dr. Debra Thomas Thank you for coming on to the show. Thank you for having me really appreciate it. I'm very excited We have a lot to talk about Debra's background is awesome. All right here. It is she is the she's triple A's editor-in-chief of their journal Which is American anthropologist? She's a professor of anthropology at University of Pennsylvania core faculty and gender sexuality women's studies She's got her PhD from NYU in 2000 and she's interested in political anthropology Sovereignty violence the afterlives of imperialism Transnationalism diaspora race and gender performance and popular culture Political economy and the Caribbean. There's what are you not interested in is the better question She taught at Duke for four years in cultural anthropologies. Is it a four-time author ish? Yes, ish so many so many different publications I'm excited to talk about and also work on some film as well two films two films And she's the director of the Center for Experim experimental ethnography At the University of Pennsylvania, which opened just about six months ago And it's right there, so I'm really excited to talk about all of this and get to know you better Let's let's dive let's dive into Understanding, you know who you are how like who are you as a kid that led you to become an anthropologist? Oh, no No, I never woke up one day and said oh, I want to be an anthropologist. I completely fell into anthropology I was a dancer actually I was a professional dancer in New York for many years and had been trying to think about what's next and The dance company that I performed with which was urban bush women We did we had a research to performance methodology and we also did these community based projects where we would work With different grassroots organizations in a city where we would go on some kind of project That would use music and dance to generate something else. So whether it was you know We worked in New Orleans for example with a Basketball team that needed math tutoring and so our task with them was to up their grades and math Worked with a community bookstore and some of their literacy programs. We worked with the welfare rights organization on Empowerment and knowing, you know knowing people's rights, etc So, you know that kind of process was really interesting to me because for me dance had always been a way to Understand bigger political questions about the worlds that we inhabit, you know So I thought maybe I wanted to do research like that But on a higher level like what are the are there situations in which that kind of work was done? not just at the local grassroots level, but at a national level and In Jamaica dancers were very involved with the anti-colonial project And so I was interested in how they did that how they attempted to transform people's ideas about their own cultural practices What was important about them? The institutions that they set up in order to train young people in the various dance forms that were no longer Just ballet and opera and classical music But in fact had a grounding in Jamaican Afro-Jamaican tradition. So that's how I ended up back in school But I had applied to I didn't know anybody who had gotten a PhD So I started pulling my friends and you know trying to find somebody who I could talk to You know about that and eventually went and visited with a friend of mine and you know one thing led to another I ultimately went into a Latin American Caribbean studies Masters program and one of my first classes was with an anthropology professor, and I just like Fell in love good Well, okay now as a as a dancer This is this is very interesting. You still dance today Really like in the living room in the living room with your kids exactly. Yeah at weddings Likewise, yeah likewise But so teach us about you know before we get to you know NYU and stuff and and even past that what what was the Dancing for anti colonialism teach us about that. How does that what is that? Yeah Well, I mean, I think you know throughout Africa some places in Latin America. Certainly the Caribbean And some places in Southeast Asia the 1950s and 1960s was really a time of political ferment, you know, it was the moment that a lot of nation-states who had been colonized by European countries were questioning that political relationship and were fighting to overthrow colonialism in Algeria that was a war You know, it was an actual fight like that In some of the British colonies it wasn't a military episode It was a gradual process of transition toward Decolonization and independence So one of the things that happened in many of the British colonial territories is that really bright young people would get scholarships to go and study at Oxford or at Cambridge, right? And so there were a number of people who had artistic training in Jamaica and ended up in Scotland or England And then they ended up learning folk dances in England and then they started to wonder, you know Why don't I know my own folk dances? We must have folk dances in Jamaica and so for them I think it really started a process of questioning what they had been taught in terms of the superiority of British culture and You know kind of provoked them to look more into their own indigenous history and their own Afro-Jamaican traditions and to valorize the African part of the Afro-Jamaican Which would then allow them to see what are the practices that were brought during the transatlantic slave trade to Jamaica adapted to the local environment that really sustained people during the period of slavery, right? So they ended up doing a lot of research Into the history of those practices into the ritual shape of those practices into the rhythms and You know musical instruments of those practices and then for dancers, of course into the dances and so then they would take all of that material and Transform it for a concert-danced stage, you know incorporating it into performances as The National Dance Theater Company of Jamaica So it was really an attempt to sort of change people's minds about the values the value of their traditions what a unique way to augment perception through through dance and theater and Especially because there is so much richness in the culture of dance and theater across the world But also that there it's a very important story to tell about what happened in the transatlantic slave trade But the numbers are so huge. It's like 12 and a half million Africans were moved across to All over all over. Yeah, Latin America Caribbean the United States Canada. Yeah. Yeah, and That's I think that's the largest migration a forced migration in the history of the world. I think I would assume so. Wow So Now, okay now as But then it's like what do you you know, I mean the thing I think that's special about a Theater also music also artistic representation of visual art as well, but dance in particular is That, you know, one stores memories in the body, you know And one marks social relations and histories through the body also So these dances are not just sort of movements undertaken for a kind of ritual effect, but they're also You know a store a storehouse of history. It's an archive. You know, it's an archive of you know Personhood and archive of the history of a community and archive of the social relations of the community and also sort of life sustaining Tools, you know in context of great degradation. So when people practice them today They don't necessarily know those long histories, but in practicing it. They're still participating in that tradition not everybody still knows those languages, you know, but in singing the words They're still invoking that long tradition. Yeah, you feel it through your body when you watch We we had the Pacific Islanders in San Francisco doing their dance and it was so Just the energy was so strong coming from them and it was just sinking through us and we were observing the culture that has That the dance that has progressed through them over time and it's just been it was very interesting Yeah, yeah dances a unique medium in that sense I think so and like then there's like that Australia and New Zealand have that way is it just New Zealand? Yeah, has that has that like their rugby games or whatever they do that like Nat the like create like a very aggressive dance Is that and then there is there's yeah, so Okay, because I think we're actually gonna end up talking about that a Little bit more as as we keep going on. What what was your thesis on at NYU? Uh My dessert my PhD dissertation. Yeah, so it really was about that, you know, what were How were artists involved in these anti-colonial movements? What were they trying to do? What kinds of institutions did they set up in order to transmit that to other people both in terms of the schools and the dance Come the performance companies or the theatrical companies And then also, you know, how did that change over time, right? Jamaica got independence in 1962 National Dance Theatre Company was formed in 1962, but that practice in 1962 is very different from what's going on in 70s from what's going on in the 80s. What's going on in 90s? So I was interested in how new generations of performers coming through might have configured their purpose differently and why you know what it was about the changing reality on the ground that pushed a different vision artistically and also then, you know as artists, I think we have You know a healthy hubris about our influence in the world, you know We feel like we can change the world through art, you know and through performance But of course many people remain unchanged So I was actually quite interested in the extent to which people who weren't involved in those movements Really were attached to them, you know, did it actually change people's minds? Were people interested in these Afro-Jamaican traditions, which are largely rural traditions, you know What people in the city do they care about that, you know And if they don't care about that or if they only sometimes care about it, when do they care about it, you know Is it only at independence time where we have the national festival and all the school children do their performances Or is there some other sustained kind of relationship and then if they don't care about it at all What do they care about instead, you know So what do they feel actually represents themselves as Jamaicans better than the national dance theater company Or better than what they're learning at the school of art or yeah, you know And what I've, you know, one of the things that I found was that You know clearly by the time we reached to the 1990s Dancehall culture has sort of Taken over in terms of a public expression for young people of what it means to be Jamaican You know, it wasn't really any longer these kind of country traditions that seem to them to many of them to be Backwards, you know, not something they would do every day, but dancehall you live every day, you know, it's blasting from every Car stereo, it's on every corner and the big speakers and you know, so that You know, I was interested in how that popular cultural representation became the louder Manifestation of Jamaican national identity by the you know by the 1990s early 2000s, of course, they've always been popular expressions of Jamaican this right, but Easier to suppress in earlier moments, and I think by the 90s. It was just louder, you know and there was no way to really control it as Perhaps people had tried to do in the past and The theme of the dance was a lot of the time anti-colonialism Well, I mean that wasn't an explicit theme in the dances per se though. There are certain Pieces of choreography that the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica did and developed that You know, we're explicitly addressing the political situation or telling those that story of decolonization But in their own research into the the sort of traditional Afro-Jamaican Music and dance forms all over the island, right? Because it's different practices in different parts of the island That was a kind of anti-colonial move because to that time for middle-class people, you know, dance was ballet and you know, you certainly didn't dance barefoot and Definitely there was not a drum in the dance studio, you know So they really inaugurated a sea change in terms of what was acceptable artistic production on a concert stage You know, so that was a you know It seems odd now because that's so normal But at the time it was a really radical thing to do because it was changing the cultural orientation of the audience You know or it was intended anyway to change the cultural orientation of the audience And it grew a lot over 60 to 60s to 90s Just you said different parts of Jamaica picked it up and started having their own sort of dance Well, there was a festival movement that really started in the 50s, right, where People in all the different towns all over Jamaica school children would develop a dance or performance or something that they'd compete then at the Local level at the parish level and then those winners would come into the city Around the time of independence and there would be a big competition, you know, and you would choose the best The best dance the best monologue the best play the best song, you know those kinds of Things and so that was one way that people showcased, you know, what are the traditions all over the island, you know But other companies style of dance What there's lots of different styles and there's the use of there's they added like a drum and that was new and there's Well, it's new to middle-class people on a concert stage Yeah, these traditions existed all over the island. Yeah prior to that but but Unknown to many of the city people, you know, unless they came from rural Areas so, you know different forms in different parts of the country. There are two areas of Jamaica that are maroon populations or maroon communities and maroons had fought 450 years against the British army and one and ultimately signed a treaty with the British that granted them sovereignty over their own land So those folk have their own traditions called carmante. They have particular rhythms that they play on the drums They have a horn which is called an abang and they have certain Things that are played on the abang and different songs that are played But you know in each pocket depending on where people had come from and how they adapted their traditions these kinds of practices Developed there's a practice called Tambu. There's one called dinky mini. There's pokumenia. There's lots of different Things that developed both during and after the period of slavery and after slavery the sort of big one that developed was called kumano It's 450 year fight against for four-year land against the British whoa 150 150 yeah, what year that start? Oh When did they sign the treat is it really most of the 18th century 1800 and some of the the end of the British took over Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655 so sort of from Just past that period into the 18th century That's one thing about anthropology that is Ridiculous is just the amount of complexity of people fighting for land and fighting wars for land and resources and whatnot Okay, so so now within the studies that you're like really focused on Wait, wait, you had a period of time that you were professing afterward at Duke Right is that where you went after after my PhD, yeah Not immediately. I went first. I had a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Wesleyan University Which is in Connecticut? So I was there at the Center for the Americas for a couple years teaching Doing research etc. And then I got the job at Duke and cultural anthropology and so was there for four years And then it was to University of Penn after that interesting so because that's been How long has it been at Penn now? It's like We got there in 2006 Okay, so 12 years there and four years at Duke before that so that's it's a lot of teaching. That's like 16 years I mean there are people here who have been teaching for 50 years. Yeah, that's right. There's lots exactly now Now now now teach us about what was being taught what you were teaching at Duke and what you're teaching at Penn and Let's ask about what you were teaching first then we'll ask about like what it was what's been like with the students as well Remember what I was teaching at at Duke all the time You know often I teach an undergraduate class on the Caribbean, you know culture and politics of the Caribbean where we introduce students to Caribbean history and politics and economy and They read ethnographies that are you know contemporary ethnographies about what people are doing research on today I taught Political anthropology class. It wasn't called political anthropology, but it's a class. I also teach at Penn It's called race nation empire. We're really thinking about the formation of the modern world And how that's tied up with these histories of imperialism and slavery and racial formation I Teach intro now at Penn introduction to cultural anthropology and what does one learn in in that class? well, hopefully one learns something about the diversity of humankind and Learned something about the way anthropologists have come to categorize people And and the history of that and sort of new ways to think about Those processes hopefully one learns Something about The ways people organize their families and how we think about some of the classic themes in anthropology like kinship or exchange or Crealization cultural contact, you know how people over the centuries have sort of Interacted with each other over time You know, yes Classical anthropological yes. Yes, and and what about the current focus on Gender sexuality and women's studies So what about what's really important for people to know about that today? Yeah, it's such a huge field. Yeah, such a diverse field. I mean my own interest Is always I mean I'm interested Not only in what women do which is often how people think about women's studies But in how all of the processes that we study have gendered Dimensions and gendered effects. So, you know, I do a lot of research. Sorry, I do a lot of research on Violence and nationalism and globalization. So I'm interested in how those processes also Come out of and mobilize or reproduce or challenge particular gendered ideas about What men are supposed to be like what women are supposed to be like what men do what women do? How families should be formed or not formed and you know, it comes into contemporary issues For example related to LGBT rights and you know, how how a nation-state wants to control, you know People's sexuality or open up controls previously held controls around people's sexuality So I think for me the the focus on Gender is really an analytic focus like how do we look at everything in the world as having something to do with Gender, right? Just as you know, how do we think of everything in the world or every process that's going on in the world as Being racialized, you know that we don't you know race is not a kind of meta problem of sort of neutral processes like liberalism, you know But instead to know that liberalism is built through racial ideas and ideas about race and the classic sort of English Framers of liberalism are theorizing political and political democracy at the same time as they're thinking Through property relations in a context in which slaves are not cons are considered to be property and not humans So we have to understand democracy is something that is already built on certain social and cultural foundations that have at their base racial and gendered divisions And that's really like that's that's an important variable to calculate of race and gender within all the different Constructs and aspects of of society So what have been some of the important takeaways and like learnings from looking at things in that led through that lens Well, I mean, I think you know one one Perhaps becomes thought of as an iconoclast, but if if we say it often enough I think it starts to be recognized as as true but so, you know, I think one of the things in this country that Often happens is that people want to ignore race or they want to see racial discrimination as sort of an individual Failing or an individual problem and not a systemic and structural Issue that has a historical context, right? So people want to say for example that we're post-racial, right? And I think if you if you take a long historical and anthropological View of political history and global political economy Then what you actually come out with is okay all of our modern institutions are Forged in the crucible of Racism and racial discrimination and the transatlantic slave trade if we're thinking about the Western world, right? And if that's so that means that our contemporary Political institutions economic institutions, etc. Are all coming out of that infrastructure that was created You know from 1492 Onward and so we can't escape it We have to think about it and we have to confront it and we have to track it not in a linear way You know, oh because of this slave law in 16, whatever now we have this it's not like that But to understand that all of our modern institutions are really rooted in that history Means that we can look at different kinds of solutions that are structural and systemic rather than just Individualizing the problems that we face today. Yeah. Yeah, what would be some of the Some of the some of the good solutions that you have in mind for us to To be There's a root level the root level causes of some of the systemic issues that we have What are some of your solutions to some of those? I? Think you know so many people propose the important solutions. We already know them You know, it's like massive structural change that will actually equalize opportunity for everybody, right? and certainly You know funding for education funding for for kids to have after-school programs You know leveling the playing field creating Pipelines, I mean this is stuff everybody knows and you know people choose to do or or not do and certainly there are Diversity programs and pretty much every corporation now and then we see the kind of changes With respect to sexual harassment policy. I mean people people know what to do it's What you know structurally and systematically people know what to do so it's a choice to do it or not do it But I think on the interpersonal level, too You know that is more difficult and that requires a different kind of commitment and it requires a commitment to having diverse social groups, you know And I think despite everything most people don't you know most people kind of stick with People they understand and people they know and it turns out that their social Collectives aren't quite as racially diverse as the country is for example. And so I think You know, there's the sort of internal experiential psychological side of Racism or gender discrimination that really takes a lot of internal psychological work and interpersonal work and that has to happen alongside the structural changes You know in order to create the broader change because you know as we see with governments and shifting policies policies change and maybe Maybe things open up You know, but people's minds change a lot slower So I think and that's I think what we see today in in this country Too is a kind of backlash against some of the structural changes that have happened because people's minds and hearts haven't changed Yeah deep process of getting into our hearts It's deep. It's a deep long consciousness shift. Yeah, yeah, what about these books that you authored? Political life in the wake of the plantation modern blackness Then they also Co-editor of globalization race What are what are really important exceptional violence as well? What are the theses of these books? Yeah, well modern blackness is really an adaptation of my dissertation. So, you know the answer to that already. Yeah, yep Exceptional violence came out of Something that happened in the in the community That's you know one of the focus sites in modern blackness Where that had been the community where I used to live and that had been a community where members of both political parties live side-by-side Without problem and in Jamaica. There's a kind of long history of political violence between the parties that gets mobilized, especially at election time and during the 1970s that political distinction was mapped on to broader Cold War Distinctions and became a kind of communist versus capitalist sort of argument That obviously has dissipated with the end of the Cold War and yet this kind of system of political Curry favoring, you know persists, right anyway, so this community was one in which It was not a homogenous community politically and people had strong relationships across the political Boundaries and it had always been like that and there are some communities like that in in Jamaica and The basically the weak that modern blackness was released There was a gang war that developed in the community that Sort of developed along these political party lines linked with other communities in Kingston and one of the kids that was in a theater group that I had Developed while I was doing my field research was killed in this in this war So that book emerged from my investigation into how how and why would this have happened now When you know for 40 years this has been a peaceful community, you know, what is it that? Made this kind of violence flare up in this community at this time And what is the history of that violence, you know, because when we experience these moments of exceptional violence That's the title sometimes they seem like sudden and unexplained Flare ups and like they come out of nowhere, you know, and so in that book I'm trying to show well it comes out of a much longer history of violence And to track what that history is and how it continues to circulate both structurally and through popular culture Music novels films, etc And so there's you know, there there are things that catalyze a kind of flair But the conditions are always there, you know and to talk about that as the history of the West right in the legacy of the West the volume Globalization and race came out Sort of out of a conversation with a friend of mine who's the co-editor of the volume Kamari Clark Just wanting to bring together a number of scholars who were thinking about those issues, you know There had been a lot of scholarship at the time about globalization and what that what what that meant, you know What what it looked like? What the effects were? economically, you know and politically and also in terms of people moving all over the globe to Find work or keep work and corporations moving all over the globe to find cheaper costs and cheaper labor and so there was a lot of scholarship on globalization very little of which was really attuned to You know what was going on in terms of racial dynamics, you know was this exacerbating already existing equalities or Is there potential for overcoming some of the racial problems that have happened? So we just wanted to bring together a number of scholars who were working on those issues in different sites to sort of See what kind of conversation, you know, that would be and so that conversation ended up being about Being an edited volume and with the articles chapters from all of these other Scholars and then we wrote a framing essay as the introduction did globalization end up Exacerbating racism or decreasing it ameliorating it. Oh, you know, it's everything is complicated, right? so in some, you know, what I see or what I was seeing at the time in my own research was That you know on a structural level if we're looking at indicators, you know as the state retreats from Investing in certain social goods like education health care, etc. Etc. It makes people who are already precarious more precarious so on that level it has a deleterious, you know Effect and whoever is already marginalized within a population becomes more marginalized and that's usually Blackfoot, right? And poor whites, you know, but in different ways at the same time In my little corner of the world, you know, what was going on Was that the people who were coming of age around the time of independence? They were in that community dependent on middle-class people for access to certain things jobs Letters of invitation to a school a better school for their kid You know Admission to a loan service or you know things like that that middle-class people served as the Happily, you know in in a committed way served as brokers for the working-class people in that community What that meant was, you know, there was a tightness of relations, you know across class But it also meant that they had to Perform their class roles, you know, there was a deference that was expected to the middle-class people in order to Convince them to act on Their behalf, you know, and I don't say that that that the relationship was false It wasn't false, but it required a certain kind of class organization, right? So fast forward, you know 30 40 years those people are now in their 60s or you know in the 90s and 2000s or in their 60s their children have migrated Largely, I mean migration increased exponentially and partly it's because people need to go elsewhere to realize their Economic dreams or you know to get the education that they want to get or get the job that they want to get so there's a push You know for the migration But it also means that now these migrated children are sending back money Remittances they're sending back goods. They're sending back clothes And so their parents who had previously been dependent on the local middle-class Are now getting what they need from their kids who are abroad very interesting So it means that they don't have to do that deference any more, right? So it's complicated, right? So, you know, they're now sort of more autonomous more self-sufficient What that also means is that the ties that bound classes together in the community have weakened Oh, wow And it means that some of the middle-class people stopped being involved in community affairs There was more fear and suspicion on both sides, you know So all of these things have very you know, not only double-edged swords, but like quadruple-edged swords. Yeah, whoa So a family can have Some of its offspring go overseas to maybe a more economically prosperous area earn money send it back home And then the family they have stronger ties to maybe the middle class For just just into just integration wise now They can as a lower class can step their economic stage up and then create potentially weakened those ties between the yeah, very Very interesting. So these are the These are these are the interesting stories of globalization that I don't think get discussed often enough Well, because people are dealing with policy people are dealing with macroeconomic issues people are dealing with numbers You know and I think the beauty of anthropology is that you're really getting at the nitty-gritty Because you're following people, you know, and you're trying to understand the intimacies of people's social world So, you know, your numbers aren't big in terms of what other social scientists would call a sample size you know, but But the depth of the relationship and the length of time that one spends Working on these issues generates a sort of a very complex You know, I was gonna say birds I view but it's not that really it's a you know, a complex emic perspective on What the effects of some of these big macro processes are and it allows us to understand the very complex and sometimes Contradictory effects that processes have so that we're not surprised, you know, when it when when they kind of turn into Policy events Yeah, this is then there's almost a There's a benefit from a very birds-eye perspective on how resources are flowing and what what's going on between maybe two countries but then there's also a very large benefit to going into having a just behind someone's eyes Individually with their family and their relationship with people around them and then all of a sudden you're actually learning that their Offspring is making more money in the place sending the money that kind of thing. Yeah And to see that those stories are different in different places, you know, there's no one Effect of globalization, you know, it looks different here from there from there from there. So there's no One sort of policy universal that's gonna make sense Everywhere or even in sort of humanitarian Efforts for example, you know if one really looks at as many anthropologists do really looks at, you know How that works in X location or Y location, you know, you see it's very different So imposing a policy solution, you know across territory without regard for local differences historical differences Etc. You know, it doesn't work. Yeah Sadly policy makers don't don't consult anthropologists that often that would be that's a very powerful Combination policy makers and anthropologists policy makers like ethicists. There's there. There's a lot of important combinations artificial intelligence engineers and ethicists anthropologists, you know, these yeah Anthropologists do work on all that stuff. Yes. I mean, that's what's Nice about the field is it's very broad. It's very eclectic. It's a big giant tent. It is. Yes I feel very at home here feels very good because I'm such a multidisciplinary person This is a very multidisciplinary show. We say we're disciplinarily promiscuous Disciplinarily promiscuous yesterday. I was called an undercover anthropologist. Yeah, disciplinarily promiscuous. That is so funny I love that. I love that Yeah, that's that's a good one. I want what was it would be the one with like with a Like Disciplinarily polyamorous or something Right like that Okay, let's let's ask you about your about relationships with teaching because as you teach you have students and you teach them Across this information, you know, you're learning from them. They're learning from you What have been some cool takeaways for you from this process for me? Yeah Different at the undergraduate level from the graduate level of course at the undergraduate level I mean, it's just really beautiful to see that light bulb turn on You know and to see it happen in the classroom to see someone find their passion You know, which doesn't happen like all the time, you know, not everybody wants to be an anthropologist or have that kind of a take Excuse me have that kind of a take on the on the world, but When you see it it is lovely, you know, and we do have a couple I have had Undergraduates both at Duke and at Penn who are now my colleagues here, you know, who got bit by the bug That's so cool. You know now they're here. They're here. They're there are professors elsewhere They're teaching their own students, you know, which is quite lovely But if you think they don't go into anthropology once that light bulb turns on, you know, they could take it in any field students who are filmmakers now or who are artists or You know who are doctors or you know, but they have a sensibility that they carry with them, which is nice grad students are different I Learn always a ton from my grad students and the kind of intellectual and social Relationships we have are really valuable to me because you know, we're working through material together I have more experience at it than they do but they always bring fresh insights to stuff I think I already know You know and I learned from their research projects, you know When they're out in the world doing their field work and they're sending back, you know monthly This is what I did this month and these are the questions that have come up Or when they're thinking it through when they're writing their dissertation and you get to read it, you know It's you learn about, you know, I don't do research in West Africa But I feel like I know quite a lot about it from students who are working there or You know other parts of the world and that I think is you know, really lucky I literally pinch myself every week and say I can't believe That people pay me, you know to do something that I love Yeah, I was I was loving how you were explaining that graduate students will send you a summary of what they're working on and you get to just like Dive into what they care about in that moment. You're learning about where they're at what they're doing. Yeah couple quick thoughts You have some films that you've worked on And then you have the experimental ethnography Center now Center for the experimental ethnography I want to know something That I think we talked about on the show a decent amount, but it's geopolitics and I'm curious what you've seen with China's investment into Jamaica the Caribbean Africa What have you been because the relation China-Africa relations are very interesting And there seems to be a big geopolitical push for who is going to be supplying The growing economies with their socks and underwear Toothpaste and stuff like that. Well, and who is the new You know political entity that's extracting minerals and right because that yeah, I mean in many African countries That's the principal reason for Chinese investment in others It's infrastructure development its roads its hospitals in the Caribbean. It's mostly infrastructural development and toward a diplomatic agenda which is To get more Caribbean countries to recognize the PRC rather than Taiwan Because there are a number of Caribbean countries that are still allied to Taiwan So every Caribbean country gets a vote in the UN and the PRC has a one China policy So that some of their activity in the Caribbean is really geared toward that diplomatic shift that they want to see happen In Jamaica and well throughout Latin America in the Caribbean. There's a long-standing Chinese presence There are a lot of Chinese who came over in the late late 19th century early 20th century as migrant laborers In Jamaica many of them Went into retail grocery Made a variety of innovations into that field became the shopkeepers in every rural town in Jamaica and Subsequently developed a kind of monopoly on the bakery industries and other kinds of industries So there's a long-standing community in Jamaica So this new group of Chinese who are coming over it's created some interesting dynamics is on one hand You know what it also represents is a decline of US investment in Jamaica, especially after the financial crash in 2008 And so where the US diminished their investments China stepped up and that sort of You know was part of the beginning of a process where you were seeing more and more Chinese interest They have invested in the box site industry in Jamaica, which is the raw material for creating aluminum Well, and that's always been a kind of contentious who controls box sites in Jamaica is very important And the US was very interested in the 1940s and 50s because of the Korean war and they were requiring You know closer aluminum stores Then what they were getting it from before so You know so on the other hand on one hand, it's an opportunity There's like infrastructure development like you were saying is it but then we have a new road That's you know beautiful and that was built by the by the Chinese So on one hand, it's an economic opportunity for the country To court this investment and see you know what kinds of alliances can be made on the other hand People experience it as a many people experience it as a kind of new imperialism Not the same political imperialism that European countries did and that the sort of you know soft and not so soft American influence politically has been really from the 60s on board but an economic imperialism and one that carries with it a kind of racism people feel that they're being treated poorly by by new Chinese coming in so as with every new process that generates both Excitement and anxiety and so I think it's it is an interesting thing to follow throughout Latin America the Caribbean and Africa right now Because it really speaks to a contemporary shift in terms of a global political economy and moves us You know moves us into a very new dispensation You know away from the kind of dominance of the West Towards something else that's going on and we don't know where that's going to end up. Yeah Yeah, it's a geopolitical melody and yeah last thought about the current state of Humanity and about maximizing human potential. What do you think? Oh, what do I think about maximizing human potential? What I think is that I can only have an impact on that in my own small world So I tried to maximize the human potential of my students My undergrad students my grad students and certainly my own children. Yes, try to give them You know the opportunities to think big, you know and to and to to be curious and to really investigate a question until You get to the end of that road and sometimes that road takes a long time to get to the end of so for many You know for all of us who become anthropologists. I mean these are lifelong questions in a way You're constantly trying to answer Different iteration of the same question that you started out with because each step you take you get a little further down the road Yeah, yeah Thank you so much for joining us on this show. This has been very enriching and there's still so much more to understand Thanks, Deborah. Thanks. Thank you. It was great. Such a pleasure. Thanks everyone for tuning in We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below Also, check out Deborah's bio and link down below also triple A's link down below give them a look and Go and build the future manifest your destiny into the world everyone. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you soon. Peace Thank you, that was so fun Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to simulation. I'm your host Alan Saki and we are on site at the American Anthropological We're gonna redo that. All right