The Wenner-Gren Blog

In 2011 Joseph Jay Sosa received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant to aid research on “Sao Paulo Has Never Been Pinker: Dilemmas in Representing LGBT People in the Public Sphere,” supervised by Dr. William Mazzarella. After Dr. Sosa received an Engaged Anthropology Grant in 2017 he was able to return to the field the following year to aid engaged activities on “LGBT Statistical Activists in Brazil: Training New Activists for the LGBT Pride Survey”.

Public debates over state recognition of LGBT rights has been a contentious site for political action in Brazil over the past decade. These ‘sex wars’ have taken place over anti-discrimination legislation, but also through moral panics about sex education and queer artistic censorship. And they have taken place against an increasingly hostile remarks by high profile politicians as well as the highest number of reported anti-trans and anti-gay murders in the world. For activists connected to Brazil’s LGBT social movement, these changes represent a historical reversal of early social movement victories in Brazil’s democratic period.

With support from the Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, I conducted fieldwork from 2011 to 2013 with São Paulo-based LGBT activists who participated in civil society organizations, in social media and protest publics, and in public administrative offices on the municipal, state, and federal level. In hearings, street protests, and in organizational meetings held in union halls, classrooms, and municipal health clinics, activists described what they characterized as increasing anti-sex attitudes in their daily lives and in the media they consumed. Activists had different names to describe a growing erotophobic conservatism that they noted in the political public sphere and sometimes in their daily lives.

Since 2013, Brazil has entered what scholars and observers have characterized as the “long Brazilian Crisis,”[1] fueled by economic instability, corruption scandals, and political controversies and a rapid partisan shift. Mass protests across the ideological spectrum have become part of Brazil’s urban and news media landscapes. The instability led to the highly polarizing removal from office of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president in 2016. In this context, ideological disputes over gender expression and sexuality have given a further cultural shape to this crisis and become a primary battleground in a highly polarized society. Moral panics over LGBT panics over artistic performances and educational policies have led to increasing censorship practices. In October 2018, presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro played upon a moral panic that the government wanted to implement a national public school curriculum teaching homosexuality and pedophilia to children. The successful disinformation campaign was a large factor in Bolsonaro’s electoral success.

With the support of a Wenner-Gren Engaged Anthropology Grant, I return to São Paulo in 2018 in order to re-engage with activists and community members about how queer life and politics had changed since my original fieldwork. I partnered with a community organization, Vota LGBT, a non-partisan collective of activists, researchers, and media producers who collect and publish information on the political views of the LGBT population. The collective was formed in 2014, and included university student activists with whom I had previously conducted fieldwork. Together, we presented information about the current challenges facing trans and queer communities in Brazil as well as current social movement campaigns to improve the lives of LGBT Brazilians. Vota LGBT also used the opportunity to show community members their data collection techniques and explored ways community members might generate research projects meaningful to them. In our four presentations, open discussion with led to different outcomes. In one meeting, we participated in a brainstorming exercise, where individuals mapped their most pressing needs on local and federal levels (see images 2 and 3). At another workshop, participants developed questions they would like to employ in future community surveys.

Although survey data is regularly collected by researchers regarding LGBT domestic status, violence victimization rates, and even consumer habits, less information has been conducted around their views on pressing social and political questions. Vota LGBT conducts crowd surveys at Queer Pride events in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Vota LGBT  hopes to increase its surveys and expand the reach of LGBT perspectives into Brazil’s news media.

[1] See Grigera, Juan, Jeffery R. Webber, Ludmila Abilio, Ricardo Antunes, Marcelo Badaró Mattos, Sabrina Fernandes, Rodrigo Nunes, Leda Paulani, and Sean Purdy. 2019. “The Long Brazilian Crisis: A Forum.” Historical Materialism 27 (2): 59–121.

We’re delighted to present another great addition to the Engaged Anthropology Grant blog series with a post from Catalina Villamil who had the opportunity last year to return to Uganda to share the results of her Dissertation Fieldwork Grant.

In 2015, I received a Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant to study the evolution of head and neck anatomy in humans and our ancestors. One of the clearest adaptations in our ancestors is the adoption of bipedalism, and a large part of paleoanthropological research is focused on understanding when, how, and why bipedalism evolved. Oftentimes these questions must be answered from a limited number of fossil remains, and so biological anthropologists want to get as much information as possible from as many parts as possible. My research showed that there is little or no influence of bipedalism on the shape of the head or the underlying relationships between the head and the neck, which suggests many assumptions about locomotion from fossils may be incorrect or premature.

My project entailed the collection of data on hundreds of human skeletons from Europe and Africa, in order to sample human variation. As part of this work, I visited the Department of Anatomy at the Makerere University College of Health Sciences in Kampala, Uganda, where the Galloway Osteological Collection of recent East African human skeletons is housed. This collection is vitally important in biological anthropology, as collections of African skeletal material, and in particular recent material, are rare. Further, although Africa is home to a great deal of human variation, it is not well represented in biological anthropology or anatomical research. The academic community at Makerere was welcoming and deeply interested in promoting the use of this collection, but without access to the resources that make much of osteological research possible. As a result, I wanted to go back and share my results with them, as well as other resources that could be used by faculty and students to expand research using the collection. In 2019, I received the Engaged Anthropology Grant, which enabled me to visit Uganda again and share my results with the academic community there, and to provide a workshop on anatomical and osteological research methods.

I visited Kampala on the week of October 14, 2019 to coincide with World Anatomy Day, which is held worldwide on October 15. While there, I gave a public lecture on my research findings utilizing the Galloway Collection. Students and faculty from Makerere University, as well as from Kampala International University (KIU), attended the lecture, as did representatives of the Anatomical Society of Uganda. The next day, I also provided a methods workshop, Collecting and analyzing human osteological data, to the faculty and students at Makerere and KIU. In the workshop, I discussed osteological methods for aging and sexing, data collection standards and tools, and methods for analyzing morphological data. In addition, I provided the attendees manuals and other resources, as well as short tutorials on freely available software programs and comparative datasets that they can use to carry out data collection and analysis. With Wenner-Gren funding, I was able to bring specialized calipers that can be used for data collection on skeletal materials, to assist with the workshop discussion of standard measurements and tools. These tools were donated to the department at the end of the workshop. Dr. William Buwembo, chair of the department, and Dr. Ian Munabi hope Makerere students will use these tools and information to increase research use of the osteological collections and to improve representation of African variation in published research. As part of this workshop I also met with several graduate students who are doing research both at Makerere and KIU, and we discussed their methods and research questions, leading to some productive discussions on work that has already been done by biological anthropologists and how it relates to the work being done at these two universities.

In addition to the lecture and workshop, I met with faculty members and others with the hope of strengthening collaborations between Makerere and my own university and creating an ongoing academic relationship. Like many universities in the US, the Makerere College of Health Sciences faces growing class sizes but limited resources, especially for research. We hope that we will be able to identify funding opportunities that will benefit both institutions and that will fund the next generation of anatomy- and osteology-oriented researchers at Makerere. At the end of my weeklong visit, I also met with collections staff in charge of skeletal and paleontological materials at the Uganda National Museum. Museum curators would like to expand knowledge and use of the collections at the National Museum, as well as to facilitate student training and the creation of educational materials for the Ugandan public. We hope to develop an ongoing collaboration as well.

In 2010 David Bond received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant to aid research on, “Hydrocarbon Frontiers: Experts and the Social Life of Facts at a Caribbean Refinery,” supervised by Dr. Ann Laura Stoler. In 2019 Dr. Bond returned to St. Croix when he received an Engaged Anthropology Grant to aid engaged activities on, “St. Croix After HOVENSA”. 

Saint Croix stands at a climate crucible. For the past 50 years, the HOVENSA refinery on Saint Croix – for a time, the largest in the world – generated enough wages and tax revenue to support the US territory in the Caribbean. Such fiscal wealth came at tremendous environmental cost, and in 2011 the EPA uncovered a litany of egregious lapses that culminated in a record-breaking $700 million dollar fine against the refinery. A few months later, the refinery shutdown abruptly, forcing massive cuts to the territorial government budget and sending the islands economy into steep decline.

Five years later, with Saint Croix still in a tailspin, an unprecedented Category 5 hurricane hit the US Virgin Islands. Two weeks later, a second Category 5 hurricane slammed into Saint Croix damaging 90% of the buildings on the island and wiping out all the public infrastructure. Weighed down by the destruction of fossil fuels in environmental and climate form, Saint Croix now stands at a crossroads: many residents want to break away from fossil fuels and rebuild their island in a radically sustainable way yet state officials seem intent on doubling down on fossil fuels as the only way to generate the funds needed to rebuild and buttress the island against the coming storms. A climate crucible, one with immense stakes for those on the island and of wider significance for the rest of the world struggling with how to face up to the challenge of climate change.

I was asked if I might visit the island in June 2019 to join a community conversation about how to best navigate these issues. Support from Wenner Gren helped make that visit possible, and allowed me to share findings of previous research with community leaders and chart out new lines of collaborative research with the community. An essay I wrote about the history of fossil fuels on the island became a minor actor in the unfolding drama (“Oil in the Caribbean,” Bond 2017). My research for this essay uncovered some of the refineries egregious environmental lapses and the backstory on the $700 million EPA settlement that was sidestepped and then brushed aside after the refinery closed. Although my essay hardly made a splash in the scholarly fields it addressed, about a year after it was published I started getting emails from Saint Croix. Folks on St. Croix told me it provided a new language for their lives, that it explained the history they lived and felt but didn’t know how to explain and confront. I don’t know of any higher praise for work in the social sciences. This past June, I visited the island to participate in an Environmental Forum convening on the island to discuss climate resilience and sustainability on the Saint Croix. Local environmental leaders asked me to give a keynote address that would share the arc of my essay with local leaders and key stakeholders, and then participate in a multi-day discussion of where the island might go next. It was truly an honor to spend a few days brainstorming with such a group of spirited leaders. Support from an Engaged Anthropology Grant from Wenner Gren also enabled me to conduct additional research in conversation with community concerns to publicize this climate crucible to wider audiences and advance more equitable and sustainable change on the island.

More about the St. Croix Foundation Environmental Forum can be found here.

In 2015 Dr. Julie Velasquez Runk received a Post-Ph.D. Research Grant to aid research on “Entangled Landscapes of Loss: Emotion, Identity, and Territoriality Post Rosewood Logging in Panama”. In 2018 Dr. Velasquez Runk returned to Panama when she received an Engaged Anthropology Grant to aid engaged activities on “Harnessing Technological Innovations to Further Community Engagement for Collaborative Archiving, Use, and Publication of Research”.

We sat, once again, around a table in a spare white room in Panama City, the air conditioning providing a respite from the intensely hot and humid rainy season. I was meeting with the indigenous Wounaan authorities of the traditional organization Wounaan Podpa NΛm Pömaam (Wounaan National Congress) and the newly elected authorities of their non-governmental organization the Foundation for the Development of Wounaan People. This time, the internet was down, forcing us to gather around a laptop to gaze at screenshots rather than the websites we could no longer access. After reviewing the work, we brainstormed about how to move forward with a smaller team, a Comite Técnico (Technical Committee), to develop, review, edit, and publish ethnographic multimedia content.

To me this vignette is something of a typical moment in community-based collaborative research. I have been doing collaborative work, a short-hand term that is readily intelligible and easy to translate, with local communities and non-governmental organizations for just over three decades. Such community-based collaborations are a decolonial and multi-vocal method, one in which communities guide the research from planning to write-up. The above vignette is indicative of collaborative research as a recursive process, characterized by flexibility, trust, and communication. And it also reminds that it is very time intensive and costly: this was from our fifth meeting during my fourth trip to Panama in a year, which was two more than I had originally planned. As Wounaan authorities have gotten increasingly active in development, land rights, and other critical efforts, scheduling has gotten increasingly complex.

For a Wenner-Gren Foundation Engaged Anthropology Grant I proposed to work with Wounaan to use technological advances to further collaborative archiving, use, and publication of research. In Panama, over 7,000 Wounaan live in 17 rural villages and urban areas where they elect village and national authorities in the Congress system. Using the results from a Post-Ph.D. Grant on the cultural, political, and ethical entanglements around rosewood logging, Wounaan authorities and I would work on a protocol for collaborative publication. The same globalization that facilitated intensive rosewood exploitation also has brought governmental and non-governmental activities, and with it growing Wounaan concern about the use and control of their cultural material. Recently, Wounaan have asked that I present research results in more multi-media ways, rather than simply written texts. Smart phones, and less so internet, are much more widely available than in the past, offering Wounaan new opportunities to access multi-media research. However, publishing via multi-media requires more detailed attention to collaborative development of materials, particularly because of the use of personally identifiable information, such as audio and video.

Over the course of the year, Wounaan authorities and I discussed how to create normas, norms, for collaborative publication development. We began in late July, in the main rosewood research village, where a two national authorities and I held a community workshop to discuss how to use research images and texts. The end result of that meeting was to keep the communication going, especially between village authorities and national ones, as how to best use research results (including images). For a second meeting in October, I prepared a report on rosewood ecology, ethnobotany, and its commodity chain. I met in Panama City with national Wounaan authorities and also language and cultural experts who had previously worked on a language documentation project. There, we reviewed the rosewood report and I used it as a jumping off point to discuss and show, via a digital projector, several nascent multi-media projects: the rosewood multi-modal (website and book) project, a short video to be distributed by cell-phone on how to access the 60-years of stories from the language documentation work, and a digital archive of Wounaan photographs and material culture being initiated by Liz Lapovsky Kennedy and me in the Mukurtu platform.  We discussed the many decisions that require the co-development—not just co-review—of the materials.

National authorities and I met again in March, just before their national meeting. We determined that the best way to develop such works was via a Technical Committee, which we could discuss with the plenary of the forthcoming congress.

Wounaan came together March 20 – 23 at the Jua Numi Hawia Numi Wounaan Podpa NΛm Pömaam (XII Regular National Congress of Wounaan People). There, authorities and villagers publicly discuss their issues and make decisions, codified in resolutions, on how to advance their interests. Authorities from each village and any villager who could make it, and invited officials and guests met over three days, presided over by the national authorities. I updated the plenary about ongoing work (which included an ethno-ornithology project with national authorities and a village) and asked whether the development of publications from such projects could be done with a Technical Committee. The plenary agreed. At my urging, they also resolved to make a formal resolution requesting all the photos and videos I had taken, which I, in turn, could submit to the human subjects committees that had approved the research.

A short three months later, in June, we held our most recent meeting that I address in the opening vignette. There, even sans internet, we again discussed the multiple multimedia projects. Those had grown to include initial website portions of the rosewood entanglements work: a media and geographical analysis on the Panama’s logging boom presented as a timeline (developed with student Ella Vardeman) and a multi-media and map-laden website on the social and political history of Emberá and Wounaan land rights struggles. We decided to hold the first Technical Committee meeting over the next year, when Liz Lapovsky Kennedy was available so that we could delve into the digital archive. And I committed to fund the Technical Committee for at least the first year, covering the travel and per diem costs of 6-8 participants.

The support of a Wenner-Gren Engaged Anthropology Grant was fundamental for improving rosewood research publication and strengthening Wounaan sovereignty by taking advantage of technological innovations to further consent and collaboration in the oft-overlooked publication stages.

Nos sentamos, una vez más, alrededor de una mesa en una habitación blanca en la ciudad de Panamá, el aire acondicionado proporciona un respiro de la temporada de lluvias intensamente cálida y húmeda. Me estaba reuniendo con las autoridades indígenas wounaan de la organización tradicional, el Wounaan Podpa NΛm Pömaam (Congreso Nacional del Pueblo Wounaan), y las autoridades recientemente elegidas de su organización no gubernamental, la Fundación para el Desarrollo del Pueblo Wounaan. Esta vez, el internet se había caido, lo que nos obligó a reunirnos alrededor de una computadora portátil para mirar capturas de pantalla en lugar de los sitios web que ya no podíamos acceder. Después de revisar el trabajo, hicimos una lluvia de ideas sobre cómo avanzar con un equipo más pequeño, un Comité Técnico (Technical Committee), para desarrollar, revisar, editar y publicar contenido multimedia etnográfico.

Para mí, esta viñeta es un momento típico en la investigación colaborativa basada en la comunidad. He estado haciendo trabajo colaborativo, un término breve que es fácilmente inteligible y fácil de traducir, con comunidades locales y organizaciones no gubernamentales durante poco más de tres décadas. Tales colaboraciones basadas en la comunidad son un método descolonial y multi-vocal, uno en el que las comunidades guían la investigación desde la planificación hasta la redacción. La viñeta anterior es indicativa de la investigación colaborativa como un proceso recursivo, caracterizado por flexibilidad, confianza y comunicación. Y también recuerda que es muy costoso y requiere mucho tiempo: esto fue de nuestra quinta reunión durante mi cuarto viaje a Panamá en un año, que fue dos más de lo que había planeado originalmente. A medida que las autoridades wounaan se han vuelto cada vez más activas en el desarrollo, los derechos a la tierra y otros esfuerzos críticos, la programación se ha vuelto cada vez más compleja.

Para una subvención de antropología comprometida de la Fundación Wenner-Gren, propuse trabajar con los wounaan para utilizar los avances tecnológicos para un mayor archivo, uso y publicación colaborativos de la investigación. En Panamá, más de 7,000 wounaan viven en 17 comunidades rurales y áreas urbanas donde eligen autoridades locales y nacionales en el sistema del congreso. Usando los resultados de una subvención post-doctoral sobre las conexiones culturales, políticos y éticos en torno a la tala del palo rosa cocobolo, las autoridades wounaan y yo trabajaríamos en un protocolo para la publicación colaborativa. La misma globalización que facilitó la explotación intensiva del cocobolo también ha traído actividades gubernamentales y no gubernamentales, y con ello la creciente preocupación de los wounaan por el uso y control de su material cultural. Recientemente, los wounaan ha pedido que presente los resultados de la investigación en formas más multimedia, en lugar de simplemente textos escritos. Los teléfonos inteligentes, y menos internet, están mucho más disponibles que en el pasado, ofreciendo a los wounaan nuevas oportunidades para acceder a la investigación multimedia. Sin embargo, la publicación a través de multimedia requiere una atención más detallada al desarrollo colaborativo de materiales, particularmente debido al uso de información de identificación personal, como audio y video.

A lo largo del año, las autoridades wounaan y yo conversamos cómo crear normas para el desarrollo de publicaciones colaborativas. Comenzamos a fines de julio, en la comunidad principal de investigación del cocobolo, donde dos autoridades nacionales y yo realizamos un taller comunitario para conversar cómo usar imágenes y textos de investigación. El resultado final de esa reunión fue mantener la comunicación, especialmente entre las autoridades de la comunidad y las nacionales, como la mejor manera de utilizar los resultados de la investigación (incluidas las imágenes). Para una segunda reunión en octubre, preparé un informe sobre la ecología y la etnobotánica del cocobolo y su cadena de valor. Me reuní en la ciudad de Panamá con las autoridades nacionales wounaan y también con expertos en idiomas y cultura que habían trabajado previamente en un proyecto de documentación lingüística. Allí, revisamos el informe de cocobolo y lo utilicé como punto de partida para conversar y mostrar, a través de un proyector digital, varios proyectos multimedia emergentes: el proyecto multimodal (sitio web y libro) de cocobolo, un video corto para ser distribuido por teléfono celular sobre cómo acceder los 60 años de cuentos del trabajo de documentación del idioma, y un archivo digital de fotografías y cultura material wounaan iniciada por Liz Lapovsky Kennedy y yo en la plataforma Mukurtu. Conversamos sobre las muchas decisiones que requieren el desarrollo conjunto, no solo la revisión conjunta, de los materiales. Las autoridades nacionales y yo nos reunimos nuevamente en marzo, justo antes de la reunión nacional. Determinamos que la mejor manera de desarrollar tales trabajos era a través de un Comité Técnico, que podríamos conversar con el plenario del próximo congreso nacional.

Wounaan se reunieron marzo 20 – 23 al Jua Numi Hawia Numi Wounaan Podpa NΛm Pömaam (XII Congreso Nacional Ordinario del Pueblo Wounaan). Allí, las autoridades y las comunidades hablan públicamente sobre sus problemas y toman decisiones, codificadas en resoluciones, sobre cómo promover sus intereses. Las autoridades de cada comunidad y cualquier woun que pudieran participar, e oficiales e huéspedes invitados se reunieron durante tres días, presididos por las autoridades nacionales. Actualicé la sesión plenaria sobre el trabajo en curso (que incluía un proyecto de etnoornitología con las autoridades nacionales y una comunidad) y pregunté si el desarrollo de publicaciones de tales proyectos podría hacerse con un Comité Técnico. El plenario estuvo de acuerdo. A instancias mías, también resolvieron tomar una resolución formal para solicitar todas las fotos y videos que había tomado, que, a su vez, podía presentar a los comités de sujetos humanos que habían aprobado la investigación.

Unos tres meses después, en junio, celebramos nuestra reunión más reciente que abordo en la viñeta de apertura. Allí, incluso sin internet, nuevamente conversamos sobre los múltiples proyectos multimedia. Esos habían crecido para incluir porciones iniciales en borrador del sitio web del trabajo sobre las conexiones con el cocobolo: un análisis de prensa y geografía sobre el auge de la tala de Panamá presentado como una línea de tiempo (desarrollada con la estudiante Ella Vardeman) y un sitio web multimedia y cargado de mapas sobre la historia social y político de las luchas wounaan y emberá por los derechos a la tierra. Decidimos celebrar la primera reunión del Comité Técnico durante el próximo año, cuando Liz Lapovsky Kennedy estuviera disponible para poder profundizar en el archivo digital. Y me comprometí a financiar el Comité Técnico durante al menos el primer año, cubriendo los gastos de viaje y viáticos de 6-8 participantes.

El apoyo de una Subvención de Antropología Comprometida de la Fundación Wenner-Gren fue fundamental para mejorar la publicación de la investigación del cocobolo y fortalecer la soberanía wounaan al aprovechar las innovaciones tecnológicas para obtener un mayor consentimiento y colaboración en las etapas de publicación a menudo ignoradas.