SOAS graduate student wins 2008 University of California Press / Public Anthropology Competition
29 January 2009
The winners of the 2008 University of California Press / Public Anthropology Competition have been notified and we are now writing to inform you (a) who these winners are and (b) why they were selected. Our hope is that by explaining in a clear manner why we chose certain submissions over others we can facilitate improved submissions in the future. The deadline for next year's competition is October 1, 2009.
There were 189 submissions to this year's competition. Thirty-nine were in the graduate student (or pre-PhD) category; 150 were in the professional (or post-PhD) category. The submissions came, literally, from around the world - from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America. Rob Borofsky, the Director of the Center for a Public Anthropology, and Naomi Schneider, Executive Editor at the University of California Press, worked collaboratively to read proposals, evaluate them and determine the finalists/winners for the competition.
In the graduate student category, the winner was Claudia Seymour (at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) Claudia' explores how children understand and cope with violent conflict using, as a case study, research in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She hopes to strengthen child protection efforts in areas of violent conflict. Two runner-ups in the graduate student category were: Erin Finley (at Emory University) and Claire Snell-Rood (at the University of Virginia). Erin's work examines Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) among Mexican-American and Anglo-American veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Claire's work asks how women living in the slums of Delhi, India strive to keep their families and themselves healthy.
In the professional category, the winner was Dr. Catherine Bolten. Catherine took the past year off, following her degree from the University of Michigan, and is now on the job market. Catherine's submission, "I Did It to Save My Life: Morality and Survival in Sierra Leone," deals with the moral compromises individuals made during the Sierra Leone civil war and, with the war over, how these individuals now strive to rebuild relationships and integrate back into communities. It is a poetic, penetrating study of human resilience. The first runner-up was Dr. Sarah Horton (University of Colorado at Denver). Sarah's submission deals with the integration of American and Mexican health care systems at various levels. The second and third runners-up were Dr. Susan Levine (University of Capetown, South Africa) and Dr. Lynne Nakano (The Chinese University of Hong Kong). Susan's submission weaves together the life stories of working children in South Africa's wine industry with the general politics of child labor through short, powerful vignettes. Lynne's focuses on the lives of unmarried women in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo searching for greater fulfillment.
Why did we select these submissions over others? In making our decisions, we focused on three criteria.
First, did the submission address a problem that went beyond anthropology? Was the problem defined in terms that would immediately draw broad public's interest? Numerous submissions positively addressed problems beyond the discipline. As a result, we focused on how authors framed their problems Was a problem framed in a way that would likely attract a broad range of readers? Succinctly phrased, this criterion involved defining public problems in publicly relevant ways. For example, Catherine Bolten's submission goes beyond Sierra Leone to discuss the human potential for resilience - something that attracts public attention in these difficult times. (Because A Long Way Gone, about a child solider in Sierra Leone, is on the New York Times Paperback Best Seller list, we know that books about distant places can prove interesting if they deal with subjects that intrigue readers.) Erin Finley's work with PTSD among returning veterans is of immediate interest to families and officials striving to cope with the massive influx of veterans trying to readjust to American society.
Since many submissions successfully passed the first "test," the second became critical. It involved the "fit" between the problem and the data. Was there a natural fit between the problem and the ethnographic locale? Or did readers have to stretch to see how addressing a problem in an unfamiliar locale might be relevant and interesting to them? Concerns with the environment, for example, are of broad interest today. But most readers are not interested in struggling to make a connection between how an environmental problem in Africa or Asia is addressed unless they see an immediate connection to their own immediate environmental concerns. Claudia Seymour's submission deals with a distant locale that most readers have only the vaguest awareness of or interest in. Still, the idea of child abuse - and how being a child solider or a child sex worker may be viable means for staying alive under horrific conditions - attracts readers to delve deeper into the issue. What is meant by child protection in violent conflicts? How might child protection be made effective under such conditions? The mental and physical distance of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is not an impediment. Readers can see, by comparison and contrast, underlying problems in child abuse and how one might effectively cope with them in different contexts. Sarah Horton's research involves the merging of what, on the surface, appears to be two distinct health care systems - one Mexican, one American. She demonstrates that they, in fact, constitute a single system with people coping with the dysfunctions in one by using the other (not unlike indigenous and Western medicine in Third World settings). It is a provocative, powerful point given the current concern with health care and health care reform.
The easiest way to test whether your submission "passes" the first two tests (or criteria) is to discuss your proposal with a non-academic family member, relative or friend. Are they puzzled when you explain your proposal to them? Do they try to change the topic? Or do they find it intriguing and keeping asking questions? A critical test is listening to how the person who you discussed your research with then conveys it to someone else. What gets emphasized? What drops out of the discussion? The distilled statement that your non-academic friend passes on to another non-academic person is perhaps the best test of whether your proposal effectively addresses a public concern in a readily understood public way.
The third criteria involved writing style. Some submissions attracted immediate interest while others plodded along in heavy, disciplinary prose. Writing for the broader public means writing in ways that keep a reader's attention. Students have to read certain material to pass a test. The general public is not such a captive audience. One needs to write in ways they intrigues, that attracts them. Here is an example from Catherine Bolton's submission that resonates with Anne Fadiman's writing in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down:
The people who colour this book are remarkable in that they are all too imperfectly human. They were able to survive the civil war through their imperfections, their willingness to bend their standards and sacrifice appearances to cope with the brutal situation at hand. Many of them made what seem at first glance to be appalling choices and alliances in the heat of the moment. However, steeped in these tales of horror and compromise are the seeds of human perfections. The clarity of a few years' distance from the war shows us that the sheer will to survive creates coping mechanisms that allow ordinary, flawed human beings to endure unimaginable circumstances. Brute survival-a seemingly animal instinct that we often see as a reflection of human frailty-was shaped in this instance by a foundational moral code, a need to create and maintain fundamental connections with other people. It is a grain of perfection we can grip tightly during our quest to understand what it means to be human: the mere fact that we are complex, interdependent social beings, and our survival is predicated on us retaining this basic feature. Coping, in whatever desperate ways it manifests itself, is not a flaw of the all-too-human. It is a complex act of social and physical survival, and must be understood and respected as such.
Or take an example from Claire Snell-Rood's submission (that resonates with Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed):
In the middle of a lazy late morning conversation in the basti (slum), the woman I was talking to furrowed her brows, halted mid-sentence, cocked her ears and looked over the homes to her right, and ran. Over there, the large blue Delhi Development Authority water tanker truck was surfing the potholes to slow amidst a swarm of frenzied people running toward it with containers of all sizes. You can never know when the water truck will come-or when it will return. In this settlement in the Okhla Industrial Area, many things are under predictable control: women wash laundry on time, steel dishes are always neatly stacked, and floors are swept like clockwork. And for those things that are out of control, locals have developed their own predictable habits. It's "hamara aadat," our nature, they explain to me, to weave their way through morasses of mud on neglected roads, to spin hand fans when the electricity is regularly cut, and to deal with discomfort. But still, outside of nature and outside of control is talk of the future. "When you return," they tell me, "we might not be here." No matter how much life is settled here, rumours are that the Delhi Development Authority will clear this settlement-any day, any month, any year, according to whom you ask. This is the daily life that has emerged under Delhi's urban planning, a practice that has historically pushed the poor to the edges of the city, left them out of public services, and cleared their settlements whenever new visions for redevelopment arise.
A week later, across town in an air-conditioned room, researchers from a well-respected Delhi NGO presented their conclusions about living conditions in North Delhi resettlement colony, the sort of fate those in Okhla feared. It was grim. Since the government had resettled slum dwellers from different parts of the city to this one colony, residents now drank water resembling "black tea," had almost no sewage facilities, the employed now traveled hours across the city to retain their jobs, and health was at extreme risk. As the audience posed questions, the research team stood firm in their critique of the Delhi Development Authority. Afterwards, outside the wooden-walled presentation room, different organizations passed out pamphlets and hot samosas were served. Only two or three people from the colony itself were actually there. I ran into a friend I had last seen at this resettlement colony in the context of activism. When I asked him what he thought, he shrugged, "It was what it was. Just don't think that presentation is all that the colony is."
In searching for models to emulate, you might look at Fadiman's and Ehrenreich's books. (One of anthropology's current ironies is that the best selling anthropology books are all written by non-anthropologists.) You might show your submission to non-academic relatives or friends - asking whether they honestly enjoyed reading what you wrote. Does the writing engage them? You might ask your students - particularly when they are in an open, critical mood (so you know they are not simply trying to complement you). Please remember, you are not writing for a small coterie of anthropologists. You are writing for a broad non-academic audience. If you are unsure whether your writing is effective, ask your non-academic friends. Try it out on them.
You might keep in mind the series strives for "investigative journalists plus." It leans toward investigative journalism in describing important social concerns in readable ways through the lens of specific people, contexts, and stories. At the same time, it seeks to place these specifics within broader frameworks that allow a wide range of readers to understand the larger dynamics at work.
As noted, the deadline for next year's University of California Press / Centre for Public Anthropology International Competition is October 1, 2009. To those who submitted proposals in 2008, might we encourage you to resubmit your proposal taking the above comments into consideration? And to those thinking of submitting a proposal for the first time this coming year, might we encourage you to consider the above comments as well? Thank you for your interest in the California Series in Public Anthropology and in the UC Press/Public Anthropology Competition.
Naomi Schneider and Rob Borofsky
