 Good evening everyone and thank you for attending the session of raising our voices titled the anthropologist as other praxis identity in the future of anthropology. In this session we're going to explore the responsibility of our discipline to the constructed other. Specifically, when that other is in fact the anthropologist who may subscribe to a world view that conflicts with Western paradigms. And before starting I want to thank all of the presenters, I want to thank the triple a especially everyone behind the scenes who worked very diligently to pull this off this year, despite all the hurdles. I also like to thank all of you for attending. And before we jump in. I just want to let everyone know to please if you have questions as the speakers are speaking to post them in the chat. We only have an hour for this session, which is not a lot of time for the number of speakers we have. So subsequent zoom session will also be posted in the chat, where we have plenty of time for discussion and Q&A. We will also get to meet Andy Gerbic, who is the chair of the society of anthropology of consciousness, who put this together help put this together. And so for my part before I start introducing all of the other wonderful speakers that are here this evening. I just like to talk to you a little bit about the development of this concept for the round table discussion. I'm currently the, the curator of social history at the New Bedford whaling museum. That's only been since 2017 before then I was an anthropology professor at Leelot College I taught anthropology and archaeology. And the focus of my research and work, one of the areas of focus of my research and work has been with Rastafarian culture. And so I'd like to present as my thinking behind this round table discussion, what I like to call a tale of two studies. And just so I can present how from my perspective, academic journals and academia in general treats cultural studies. And so the first study that I'd like to talk about, I did when I was a graduate student. It was a very rare story. And I'm not bragging but the very first paper that I submitted to appear review journal was accepted right away. And, you know, it got it got lots of praises it was accepted by a pretty reputable peer review journal, and it was accepted though it was criticized for a lack of actual field work. The basic argument, the basic premise I was trying to uncover as an anthropologist was the symbolism that Rastafarian's attribute to marijuana or ganja. And within this study, I stated I'm quoting this this journal article underlying this study is the assumption that material conditions and modes of production shape ideology and people's feelings about their place or facelessness within nature and society. Ideology and religious doctrine are often explained superfluously, or in culturally specific context at the expense of systemic rational and mundane explanations. And they're quoting the materialist Marvin Harris, but I was very boldly arguing that I could explain marijuana symbolism among Rastafarian's without actually doing field work. And without even asking Rastafarian's their perspective on it because as an anthropologist I could theorize this by knowing certain historical facts. Many years later, after actually doing field work among Rastafarian's and engaging in ritual reasoning sessions. I explained the very same phenomena and Rastafarian culture in a subsequent article. But I put my work into this this particular study into this context. I said that the study quote challenge the lip service that anthropology pays to multi vocal histories. Well at the same time, scholarly publications in the field, continue to utilize hegemonic models of history and sideline other narratives as emic perspectives, alternate or histories of the subaltern. And I go on to say that in the future, I will not say that Rastafarian think, feel or believe, but rather that they know and understand in the same way we would discuss any historical scientific perspective, we dean valid. And although this second paper was, as far as writing goes way better, it was just written, you know, it was better written. And although it was based on actual field work doing anthropological anthropological field work. This paper took 10 years and eight submissions to eight different journals before it was published. I even attempted to publish it through the same journal that that I published the first journal the first article in a sort of a follow up my development as an anthropologist the development of my thinking. This was precisely when, despite decades of deconstruction and cultural relativism. I started thinking about how the ways we conceptualize the so called other and rationalize and explain practices and beliefs using Western paradigms. For me became very problematic as a scholar, because I came to view them as expressions of continued colonialism and cultural hegemony. And it also forced me to recognize how as an academic, I had been removing myself from my own worldview and beliefs to be a respected scholar. Because if we think about it, even in the most basic sense to undertake these studies to be respected and to be published, we have to subscribe to, or at least present ourselves as subscribing to concepts like linear time materialism, or what's defined as rational even if in our own lives we don't subscribe to these beliefs. And if we don't do that at best will be viewed as victims of interpretive drift, which is a theory which explains how educated people who are not and I'm quoting someone here who are not psychologically diluted. This is indeed an irrational belief systems. This, it is said, is due to a slow, often unacknowledged cognitive shift in someone's manner of interpreting events, as they are involved in a particular activity, a new set of knowledge, or a valid theoretical paradigm. According to interpretive drift, cognitive shifts cause the anthropologists to buy into irrational beliefs. But what if the anthropologist is the other and subscribes to these rational paradigms. So my question for this roundtable discussion is, what does our discipline, oh, to anthropologists like me who the discipline has historically served to colonize and continues to view as other. And this is a ritual which defies explanation using Western paradigms, but is no less real or valid. My concluding question is this. How do other anthropologists make our voices heard and challenge our discipline without using the very language and paradigms that were created to highlight our otherness and reinforce that otherness. And the predicament reminds me of one of those light bulb moments I had as an anthropologist as I was listening to an indigenous Bolivian man, talking about how the Spanish had stolen everything from him as an individual, but from his culture. His land to his thinking his thought processes, everything. And it occurred to me as he was explaining this, that he didn't even have his native language to explain it in any more he had to explain his oppression in the language of his oppressors, which I think is pretty poignant. And how different would this explanation have been, if he had the power to express it using his ancestral language, and the paradigms of history, trauma and loss that his people were accustomed to, rather than that it was colonizers. So again, you know, really just some some of the thoughts behind putting together this roundtable discussion and I'm very grateful that I have the scholars here that I do to elaborate on this and give me their own and give us their perspectives on being in the field and operating with others and as an other. And so now I'd like to introduce Dr Sharon Mahars, a psychologist soupy minister, and the director of psychology at the California Institute for human science. She is a professor at National University and Brandon University. She's been a member of the AAA since 2006. She co authored six books, focused on psychological and spiritual development. Of course, such as the world has never known women creating change brings women together from many cultures, and many areas of work. Sharon has presented workshops in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Mexico, Scotland, Uganda, United States and Venezuela. So in her book, The Power of the Feminine, facing shadow evoking light, which is now impressed was co authored with an Egyptian soupy leader, a Tibetan feminist and environmentalist from Ghana, and a US professor. And I will make sure that we post the website for this in the chat Sharon so I'll now hand it over to you. So I'm a psychologist folks so I'll take a little bit of a slant than the field work. One of the things I want to point out to the beginning is that we are in the midst of a profound planetary shift. As we approach the end of an old age and the emergence of a new one. About COVID-19 economic threats are increasing many people are already experiencing crisis based on economic inequalities political and environmental influences. And these have all led to vast migrations, and we may only be seeing the beginning talk about field work we're in the middle of it in life to meet the needs of this transformational time many are focusing on deconstructing old patterns and modern ideologies, so that we can clearly understand our human past, and create a sustainable future for all. There is increasing strife as various groups of people are challenging those unlike themselves. Ideologies are in conflict faults information is being presented as truth. We can no longer count on common knowledge as there are increasing and differing interpretations of it. This is part of the breakdown of this old age structures on all levels are changing and we cannot trust many of the responses to these changes as irrational people are grasping onto irrational reasoning. We have all been deeply influenced by introjected patriarchal colonialist ways. It is the story of dominators and the dominated, given that we have thousands of years of these behaviors, our leadership motivations and styles are tainted racial conflicts gender and economic inequality are the visible elephants staring at us from the center of wherever we stand. There is no choice but to move with all that's facing us and learn from it, so that positive changes can be grounded in the hopes of opening to the forces of life enhancing changes. Observing beings, our senses enable us to preserve, perceive in many ways. This process sets the stage for looking out and observing the other. But when we perceive the other through our hearts, something very different can happen. Now here's an example of some changing values. Whereas the 2005 Human Rights Watch report focused on comparing religious words, wars occurring in over 11 nations, wars often fueled by ideologies. The 2013 Human Rights Watch report focused more on tradition, values, corporate accountability, refugee crisis and environmental neglect, how we're living. The results of ongoing conflict and strife are increasingly apparent, even as warring continues to threaten human existence. Dominate nations dominate needed resources, behaviors of land grabbing and continued acts of colonization or occupation are widespread. Dominate nations are blocking asylum seekers fleeing tyranny and destruction using the false assumption of protecting their national borders. Bonded labor and fantasy and human trafficking are applied throughout the world. Ecoside is rampant as large corporations destroy the natural ecosystems in order to grow crops, mine for metals and extract minerals for profit. Along with these threats, hate groups and hate crimes are on the rise. Many people do not know how to adapt to lifestyles and beliefs unlike their own, so they attempt to destroy them. White nationalists are afraid of losing the power they've held through patriarchal ways. We should look at the widespread violence against our sisters and brothers to realize that we have neither integrated nor heeded the higher values given to us through our profits, sacred texts, philosophers, and the great ethical exemplars of our historic past. The inability to integrate and apply these higher values is a result of the suppression of women and the ethos of patriarchy. The patriarchies do not replicate the patriarchal ordering pattern. Instead, they are based on maternal values caretaking, nurturing, mothering, and for both women and men alike. A woman by her innate mothering characteristic has inherent relational qualities relating and grounding caring values are the primary emphasis of the feminine archetype. We need to also ground this feminine archetype to know it because women as well as men have been influenced by patriarchal ideologies. From the evolutionary perspective, caring behaviors are biologically driven to assure the preservation of the species, but love and nurturing are very powerful, and we often see sacrificial acts that go far beyond preserving one's own life. It has the capacity to relate ideas and beliefs in terms of their impacts on people and the environment. This can be true whether the woman bears children or not. Although many men have an obvious loving and fathering relational nature. It is the women who are the natural mothers of the human race. Women present the hope of the world at this time, because their presence has been repressed, and now it is time for them to rise to manifest fully, but women cannot resolve what we are facing on our own. Fostering the relational caring quality of the feminine spirit in everyone, male and female is our key to greater peace and well being. It is true that women, men and people of all colors, rich and poor in all religious traditions, all gender expressions put aside grievances to co create a new world that fully honors Mother Earth and all of her species. This is a change from greed to one of living from the heart are observing selves will become engaging ones as we awaken to fully embracing life from its center. Thank you. Thank you Sharon, it's wonderful. My name is Dr. Pingan Otto, who is an associate professor in anthropology at UMass Boston, sorry, University of Massachusetts Boston I'm a local to say it that way. And I will give it to you now, Dr. Otto. Thank you so much. Thank you, Andrea. My papers entitled grassroots guidance slash guide us moving in our work at the speed of trust. I researched how race and resistance are danced into the fabric of long standing ethnic festivals in the city I live in Boston. Boston's Caribbean carnival is over 45 years old, is planned, peopled and paraded by black West Indians who are now members of multi-generational immigrant groups and neighborhoods. The year-long festival planning and costume making culminates in a parade that winds its way through some of the most economically depressed and fastest gentrifying neighborhoods in the city. Dancing, celebrating costume bodies, the vast majority of them women appear in public to do this for one day a year. Local newspapers report on this. My community, and associated geographically and culturally with incidents of gun violence, they frame the positive vibes of the parade by reifying community members as welfare queens, thugs, drug dealers, drug addicts, dropouts, sexualized bodies that are simultaneously desired and defiled but and that are deserving of being ogled, objectified, pursued by law enforcement or killed. We are never just people. Activist researchers like anthropologists loudly declare the humanity and sometimes the neglect of such communities, yet we often start our rendering of their stories with tales of death. We admit we lack embodied knowledge that we have not lived those lives in those targeted bodies. But what can happen when we listen to the living, that is when we listen to their lived expertise about their own lives? Try as we might when we write, report, publish, and publish, we cannot negate the following facts. That we write from a tradition that helped to cement racism into the academy and beyond. That poor, black, brown, and indigenous communities are often understood by well-meaning readers of our work as only perpetually inherently damaged. And that communities like mine know that all the research in the world has made little difference in their actual lives because in our white supremacist system, their lives matter least. Indigenous education researcher Dr. Eve Tuck pinpoints the problem in the troubled relations with research and researchers. The trouble, she states, comes from the historical exploitation and mistreatment of people and material. It also comes from feelings of being over-researched, yet ironically also invisible. Simply put, our research causes damage. And many members of researched communities simply distrust research, even if the researcher is one of their own, like me. Communities rightly distrust that research will bring more good than harm to them. The oft-sighted Linda Tuhiwai-Smith herself recently thrown out of a job by an administration cowering to neoliberal movements at her own institution says as much in her critical work, decolonizing methodologies. Whether our focus be on dispossession compounded by racist, embattled school systems as in Tuck's research, on methodology for centering Indigenous epistemologies as Smith's work, or on the political resistance of mass movements of gyrating bodies as I research, these communities become or remain saturated with the fantasies of others. They continue to be collateral damage for failed modernity projects of urban housing, education policy, military policing strategies, and the anti-poor, anti-black, anti-immigrant ethos that lie at their foundation. As researchers, we have been ill-equipped to be anti-racist workers interested in suspending damage, because we think we are helping to write these communities into their own freedom. Yet we often rearticulate oppression as their starting points, or we grossly misrepresent the temporality and emplacement of their cultural activity. Let me give you an example. Many researchers have categorized urban street parades as examples of liminality, ritual, and ephemera. They are, after all, not features of the everyday landscape that researchers see. Yet, how can we describe something that has taken place every year for over 45 years as ephemeral? The community's commitment to the carnivalesque, to maintaining reversal as norm, as therapy, is pervasive, deep, spiritual, and life renewing. We can no more consider their culture and struggle merely ephemeral than we can misconceive racism as occurring in fits and starts, living only in pockets and neighborhoods, and concerning only some of us. As Afro-Latina feminist education researcher Patricia Kruger Henney states, racist assaults do not occur as one-time isolated events, but are rather systemic by composition and hence repetitive by way of structural, circuitous wiring. Can we, as anthropologists, arrive ready to excavate the lived expertise of people whom our society sees as damaged, expendable, already dead? Can we sense the pulses of life begging for airtime under the rubble of dispossession? Do we pay attention to what reverberates for them? The sights, smells, sounds, tactile sensations, and stories that continue to be told, even after politicians, activists, tourists, and researchers go home. Kruger Henney asks, what are we listening for? She demands that anti-racist ethnography apply and embodied social listening to the permanence of anti-black racism as a full body engagement with our racialized social environments. We are all implicated. Speaking as an insider now, cries of any kind, triumph, grief, fear, hope, these all reverberate in closed and closed off spaces. Our cultural expression thus echoes. It's not ephemeral. If I go to the place of my people, I will find it there time and time again, not always the same in how it reaches my senses, but always there. When I listen, I hear people retelling stories, speaking their own lives, making this neglected space into their nurtured place. The work, sociality, care, and planning it takes to conceive, create, and present carnival didn't stop when COVID-19 hit these communities like a hurricane earlier this year. Thus to call our art ephemeral also denies us our resilience and determined self-continuity over time and space. To call this ephemeral art is to deny us our claim to ourselves, which is that it is our thing, done our way, that it's in us, that it is us. It is to deny the usness of us in our own place. It is to peek inside, acknowledge a pulse exists, and then rebury my people under the rubble of their own dispossession. Speaking as an anthropologist now, I hope that this stand still gives us a chance to acknowledge that we have used their stories. We call it doing ethnography towards our own success, but have we learned how to listen? And what are we listening for? I've chosen this example because we all influenced the data we gather. We've known this since the late 70s and the early 80s. We intrude, alter, and take, and to draw from the words of Rose Fenton, a researcher and festival organizer in London. Now we must listen and learn at a pace that moves our work at the speed of trust. To use equally force for metaphorical language, we can unleash social change. It's not simply a proverbial possibility within our grasp. It's an actual weapon within the grip of those of us who've made it our business and livelihood to write the lives of others. Thanks. Thank you, Dr. Otto. Our next speaker is Dr. Joyce Hook-Scott, clinical professor of African American Studies at Boston University and a national and international scholar and lecturer in African American and diaspora studies. Joyce. I think it's important just to know what I'm talking about. So I'm going to put the image up. This is the masquerade that I'm going to talk about. Zombeto in the title of my talk is Zombeto, masquerade of order and justice, indigenous knowledge as epistemological rematriation. And rematriation is a term that is used by many of the people who are in the reparations movement now. So I'm just going to quickly go through some of these. This is my first encounter with Zombeto. This is a day that when the Zombetos come out to sanctify the community, there's sort of a general emergence of many of the Zombetos that come out, coming from the forest here. And this is the palace of Zombeto, which is in Porto Novo. And I'll be talking about the legba Zombeto legba. This is the cause of Zombeto legba. The man on the left is the Zagandaho Apokiyaho, who is the chief of the Society of Zombeto in Ajara. And on the right is the spiritual chief of Ajana Baba Oro of Wadung. These are my informants and the people that I was able to talk to. I was also the representative of this king of Porto Novo who is now no more. The big tree is fallen in the forest. I can't say that he's dead. I can't use those words. And being his representative is one of the reasons I got access to a lot of the information. They want us to understand that there's nothing inside the Zombeto, the cause. And so that's just an image of that. So as I've shown you already, one of these most striking figures that you might see in the city of Porto Novo, in other places today, Porto Novo is the Republic of Benen. The Republic of Benen is a former Dahomeh, kingdom of Dahomeh. This figure is called Zombeto. It is a Wadung spirit, which is considered to be the guardian of the night, the night watchman of the night police. It's said that it is a mysterious power of nature invoked by the original founder of Porto Novo who was Te Avain, the original founder of the kingdom, one of the original leopard kings of Dahomeh. And he created this figure or he called forth this figure in order to protect the community, keep order, render justice and protect particularly women and children and to frighten off our enemies. So this is a study that I've carried out over 15 years of involvement in Porto Novo, involvement in the community there as a participant observer and a scholar. I'm not an anthropologist. I say a cultural critic and that really makes me a marginalized person to talk about something like this. So I'm definitely an outsider in this perspective, but I feel that I'm an insider and one of the few people that's been able to actually probe the meaning of this figure because of the fact that I was invited in and allowed into the society at a very fundamental level. It's an argument here in terms of studying something like Zambaito. I argue for a scholarly practice that privileges and make rather than edict scholarship. And that's I'm suggesting for something like this for much of the traditional African culture using Hemenuridiko or indigenous knowledge framework in order to understand this type of phenomenon. Beninese adherents to the Homei and Vodun have maintained the cosmology embraced and established by their ancestors allowing them to maintain an eco psychic identity. Thus in this resisting geographic and spiritual space metaphysical phenomenon like the Zambaito masquerade can manifest whole prominence and sustain a counter narrative about humanity and its relationship to the natural world to its vibrations into the rest of the cosmos. In indigenous views of masks or masquerades the community accepts them as human repositories of the ancestral spirits and gods of African cosmology in West African society. They are representatives of the divine and their performances of singing stylized dancing and otherworldly speech are ritual dramatizations of spiritual or ethical issues. In some instances like the Igungung masquerade the wearer becomes the metaphysical manifestation of an ancestor or a being who brings a message a blessing or a communal sanctification for the people's well-being and continuation of their presence and work. They symbolically bridge the earthly and spiritual worlds as the masquerades become divine emissaries. This is why they are usually revered as well as embraced and respected in traditional communities. However the study of these extraordinary beings that emerge from traditional spiritual systems like the Dahome and Vodun for example have often been approached not from a humanitical or a knowledge base a communal knowledge base but rather with an approach that results in what Voko has referred to as epistemic violence against them and this is the colonial powers general destruction of African culture has pushed its indigenous knowledge systems to the social margins of epistemological understanding. The world rather than fostering a framework acknowledging the adherence engagement with her world and especially an understanding of a figure like Zonbeto which I suggest is an eco-psychological being. It is a site of memory today very prominent in the culture it's very important it is a force of communal law and order and it's not just in Benin it is found in Togo Ghana Nigeria there's a version of it in Senegal even you can see that figure all around. One example that I want to give about a study done on Zonbeto called Zonbeto Vodun savior of the Benin's mangroves this figure was used to encourage people to save the mangrove swamp in the Mano River basin. They invoke Zonbeto and people listened and they started to preserve the mangrove swamps. Instead of listening to outside western notions they listened to what Zonbeto had to say because they knew that that was that was a divine message that was given. I just want to briefly give you an example of what happens the Zangadaho and Paklioho told me that the way that Zonbeto is animated is by the consultation of the Fa the Fa which is the divinatory script or a text let's say that is based on science and math and it is the energy force it invokes the energy force which they call a shea not only they but a shea is known in a number of the traditional african-based cultures they invoke that in order to understand and consult the fa to understand whether or not it's okay to bring out Zonbeto this powerful force and whether or not it's going to be any negative forces in that environment. One of the interesting ways that it exacts justice is that for example if something happens and I hope I don't run over time I just want to give you this quick example that say that somebody does something at night because he's the night policeman and then that say people do something wrong and here's a proverb for example Clarice Pitonee no testicle don't land we that is Clarice stepped on our testicles during the night that is a proverb that is to say something very terrible happened they violated some rules and Clarice was involved in that so the next day the Klebeto because we are not allowed to see Zangbeto comes out in the community and cries her name all over the place every house until he comes to the right house of her parents then the parents are invoked before the Justice Department before Zangbeto and the committee that controls Zangbeto and Zangbeto may ask for all sorts of things like five sacks of mosquitoes a fish with four feet all these kinds of things the point is to get the person to humbly beg pardon and to agree not to do this again not to violate transgress again you're going to do it because the name will be they'll talk about your family all the way back to your great great great grandfather and Zangbeto has the power to do that so I'll just quickly close off here and maybe there'll be some a time for questions in the in the next session in other words Zangbeto as a its tool its movements its sounds machinations of self-reformation through wielding the ashay that was invoked so that it can move it is something a form that has been in operation since the 1700s and it's a daily figure that people respect it punctuates the life the daily life of everybody in in the country and you can it's easy to see when it comes out particularly to sanctify the community if you ever go there you'll certainly see it so we'll have time to say much more about it in the next session thank you thank you Joyce our next speaker is Darden Charling who is an educator author blogger gender advocate activist leader and a former politician and bureaucrat at the Tibetan government in exile India at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Charling is currently working on her doctoral dissertation promotion promotion of human values online the Dalai Lama in the digital age starting thank you Ikea for the introduction I am truly honored to be joining an illustrious panel of speakers I'm grateful to the American Anthropological Association especially Andrew for this honor so I'm going to talk about an attractive female Dalai Lama controversy and analyze it from the western cultural imperialism standpoint the role of religion in reinforcing patriarchy or patriarchal agenda only seemed to deepen in today's times across global religious traditions the idea and discussion about a female religious head is yet to take shape but the Dalai Lama with a history of 14 male inclinations spanning seven centuries has for the last three decades made a revolutionary proclamation that his next incarnation could be a female I've discussed this in the book which both Ikea and Sharon mentioned so when asked in this case by western media majorly western media whether the female incarnation will have to be attractive I'm putting attractive in double quotes the Dalai Lama replied in the affirmative so what happens is his remarks about an attractive female reincarnation receives strong backlash mainly from western media and feminist who said that his use of that word attractive is controversial is anti-feminist and is an affront to women so what I'm going to do is I'm going to just discuss this controversy through three different theoretical standpoints first is cultural imperialism second is otherness or othering and third is cultural relativism first this controversy over the attractive remark is not just a result of cultural misunderstanding between well-intentioned parties of unequal power but this misreading of the Dalai Lama's words is simply a part of a larger pattern in which the western culture interprets aspects of eastern culture including Buddhism in whatever ways they see fit without regarding to the context and histories from which they come so it is power that affords the rest this privilege culture as a site of power struggle have been explored by intercultural communication scholars such as she too and casing secondly according to she too who is a professor and director of the Institute of Discourse and Cultural Studies at Xinjiang University in China through the entire modern world history the west has never seen spoken of or dealt with the non-western other as equal or as merely or simply different rather it is often treated the other as deviant inferior and so to be controlled and controllable in other words the contact and communication between the west and the non-western non-white and the third world communities have always been a matter of power struggle therefore the term other or east does not presuppose a unified essentialistic subject I want to draw from my personal experiences in talking about the anthropologist as the other for a Tibetan like me who's lived her entire life in India India is my exile home country sorry Tibet is my home country India is my exile is my exile is a place where I was born so for a Tibetan like me who was raised largely in south asia to come to the west to pursue further studies one major setback that I face from excelling in western academia is the dominant Eurocentrism so west as the epistomy of knowledge and inquiry is troubling and damaging to say the least so this makes a non-western anthropologist like me bound to find the western epistemological frames as not only dense but foreign thereby making me feel disconnected for instance I'm currently writing a book on the female Dalai Lama using intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to study how the conception of a female Dalai Lama intersect sex gender race and religion and I must confess boring religion literature on Tibetan race sexuality and gender is nil is almost zero so the challenge gets bigger when I draw from western scholarship to make sense of my own race sexuality and gender so what it does is not only engender what I call a surrogate research but makes me experience myself as the other and and I know this challenge is going to persist the intercultural misunderstanding between the east and the west signified in this case by the controversy over the Dalai Lama's remarks has brought to the fore an important question about western cultural imperialism a closer analysis of the controversy reveals how misinterpretation occurs when mess when western assumptions and stereotypes about an eastern religion and beliefs are challenged by a complex eastern expression such as the one made by the Dalai Lama all of these reasons an interesting larger question of cultural relativity versus political slash feminist universalism so should we privilege local cultural beliefs or expressions or should a western paradigm of worldviews and belief systems trump over cultural relativism thus allowing reference to non-western belief systems or expressions as less valid so this case tells us the importance of situating situating statements conversations discussions within its cultural context and the pitfalls of stripping it apart from its cultural and linguistic relevance so finally the focus on the word attractive which the office of the Dalai Lama later clarified as humor taken out of cultural context has distracted attention from the Dalai Lama's championing of women's rights and the fact that he was willing to overturn a seven hundred year old institution defy nonsense Tibetan Buddhism to enable a female Dalai Lama to take the mantle of leadership in Tibetan Buddhism so what happens is the progressive feminist agenda of the Dalai Lama extraordinary for the all male theocratic institution of the Dalai Lama is thus drowned out by a politically oriented surface reading of the single word or an expression he has used or essentially it could have been the reading of him as the cultural other as the constructed other so the misunderstanding that arise as a result of misreading of a humorous remark in its literalized and concrete and in its concrete form leave less room for a deeper reading within the confines of its historical cultural and spiritual context so to conclude I strongly feel that for future humanity and for a stronger and fairer system in academia our progress rests on culturally shared freedom rather than powers of individual communities groups nations or regions and in this way I agree with Shih Tzu who said that cultural members and anthropologists should be motivated to consciously try to engage in dialogue with cultural others because this I think is not only an intellectual activity that builds on the critical consciousness about cultures and histories involved but this I think is the way forward so I'm going to end here and I really look forward to the Q&A round thank you. Thank you Darden. Our next speaker is Professor Aliyah Rafia who founded the Human Foundation in 2011 she's a professor of anthropology at Ayn Shams University women's college in Egypt Professor Rafia. Thank you Akia and thank you Andrew and I'm going to take only five minutes because I was told that it's seven minutes for issue speakers so I made my presentation very condensed. My presentation is titled New Insight for Anthropology. If walking the power of the phenomenon I would like to raise the attention to these major points first we are in a transitional period transitional time the COVID-19 pandemic has made great change in our life climate change is another challenge and I think that the word needs a shift of consciousness to force to face those challenges and the other challenges anthropology needs a new insight needs a new insight to explore a futuristic perspective on the on one hand and to take new approach to deal with the current situation on the other hand I think that we need deep exploration of our history to reveal that the word was driven by the lust of domination and control and I think we need in anthropology to make depth of psychology part of the anthropology because depth of psychology would add to the anthropological approach revealing deep roots of conflicts other than the isno-sinterism and the colonialism the we need and also I think that the need the word needs to awaken the archetype of the feminine collectively and on the individual level for men and women as we are passing through an era that requires healing from a long lasting suppression of the feminine aspect in our psyche our mother earth has taken the initiative of awakening our consciousness to the need to make a paradigm shift by the realization that we are sailing on one boat worldwide this would be chance to reconsider the patterns that has been overwhelming human relationship on micro and macro levels we need to face the shadow that has driven us to kill one another and to raise for domination and control that's why I think that anthropology needs a new insight it needs to explore our interconnectedness beyond apparent differences why relativity of culture as introduced by france was and his school was a breakthrough in anthropology it made the field more humane we need to see beyond we need also to move from discussing what our universal principle that we share to investigate what kind of shared psychic roots that we have deep psychology which is dependent mainly on anthropological studies deserves attention from anthropology and because it uncovers another dimension of commonality among human beings the collective historical unconsciousness is one of the great discovery that is still has to direct the future study in anthropology depth psychology would aid anthropology to explore the deep structure which lies underneath human interactions dynamics it would attempt to understand the root of the lust to dominate and to control in international policies as well and as well as in the social relations it explains the relationship between more human oppressions and the other dimensions in the in our life by the profit being women from expressing their innate compassionate spirit the feminine archetype was buried deep in human being unconsciousness awakening the feminine requires that women participate in creating a new world and be part of the change that we all aspire awakening the feminine archetype in men and women would heal the split with our within our unconsciousness manifested in wars and the dividedness in order to move to a new age anthropology needs to study anticipated changes within human beings with their culture diversities use this relational archetype the archetype of the feminine to see unity beyond diversities the category of other will eventually disappear and the other become part of us these are but some points which is included in our book which I shared with Sharon and Darden and under the name the power and other other colleagues under the name the power of the feminine facing shadow the vacant light thank you very much thank you professor and last but not least we have a nesendoro who is a usap alum and an avid and beer player who hails from shigutu I hope I pronounced that correctly zimbabwe and studied at katsuma college kutuma college before starting in august on an anthropology scholarship at reed college in portland for him and that's it thank you I I don't have like a very long presentation I am currently a senior at reed college and so this in itself is just a great opportunity to just be here and like here and learn from all of your experiences but to talk about the kind of the issue of addressing the responsibility of anthropology towards the constructed other there is a lot that this topic in itself is topic in itself is brought up for myself in my experience of trying to attain an anthropology degree within the united states as a student who grew up in zimbabwe and came to the united states for college anthropology as perhaps it is taught or as it exists kind of assumes a kind of hierarchy of ability or of agency between the anthropologist and the interlocutor who exists in an unchanging field in which the anthropologist doesn't change but rather goes in extracts knowledge and takes it works upon it as a scientist may do with samples within a lab and publishes knowledge about it and this kind of like inherent bias that like comes with the discipline allows anthropologists to wear a mantle of objectivity that is often unchallenged in many ways and that kind of complicates the place of other individuals who become anthropologists in having to grapple with wearing this mantle of supposed objectivity but also having experiences that would clarify a kind of challenge that knowledge is otherwise cultural relativism kind of like stems or at least stemmed from a need to escape colonial or racialized systems of understanding the non-western or non-white other but in many ways it's like quickly reproduced the objects of its critique by assuming cultures as disbounded and unchanging easily discernible entities that aren't affected by larger socio-political economic forces and often what is even deemed to be cultural versus what is deemed to be political can easily come into conflict when anthropologists become the sites of being both at the end being anthropologists and so in many ways it feels as though at least as other anthropologists there is a need to kind of disrupt these days of objectivity that surrounds the way in which people write and people read anthropology but also being careful that as anthropologists we are not also agents of co-opting the knowledge systems from which we come from in a way or in an attempt to save anthropology from itself that other anthropologists may scrutinize and may bring ever a incredible diversity of perspectives to the field but that that in itself is not enough that the very foundations of anthropology of how we write of how we do research of how things are published of who gets to talk and who gets to present knowledge have also to be challenged and in a way in doing so we kind of like disrupt this hierarchy that exists between the anthropologists who can attain knowledge and the interlocutor who is only there to provide knowledge but to provide nor the critique nor the kind of like interaction or conversation with the knowledge itself um so maybe just to conclude um outside like these the the role of the other as anthropologist is not simply to become kind of a tributary of providing new perspectives um in the risk of having epist... like our epistemologies become trinkets or kind of collectors items in a glorified museum of diversity of thought are always to really change the way the discipline works fundamentally and kind of unlock the potential of anthropology to not just collect knowledge and kind of have it be in the first stages of libraries but also to use that kind of knowledge is that kind of knowledge and make it interact with the communities from which we come from and so like help not just this academic idea of what anthropology is but use anthropology to enrich ourselves and others as well as the communities in which we work and in which we've embedded ourselves that's what I had to say. Thank you so much Inesu what a profound I was wrapped and wrapped by you um just you know as a new scholar at anthropology to have such a profound perspective is amazing and such a contribution to the field and so we're going to get kicked out of this space soon but if you haven't already please quickly cut and paste the zoom information for our next session which will be Q&A and hopefully some great discussion between round table participants thank you all for attending and again thank you AAA coordinators and tech people for making this happen we'll see you in a few minutes in our other zoom room thanks everyone