Please find links to the first two readings for the Spring 2012 KUSTAR course below:

Shakespeare in the Bush – http://www.slgardiner.com/Bohannan1966.pdf

Body Ritual Amongst the Nacirema – http://www.slgardiner.com/Miner1958.pdf

Note that these links will be available only a short while before being removed and are provided on a fair use basis as copies of articles generally available for the convenience of students in this class only.

The Donria Kondh, a traditional group in India, has won a hard-fought victory against the multi-billion dollar mining company Vedanta Resources. According to Survival International India’s Environment Minister  Jairam Ramesh ruled yesterday that the mining giant’s plans to extract bauxite from from hills sacred to the small tribal group in the eastern part of the country amounted to a “blatant disregard for the rights of the tribal groups” and questioned the legality of a company refinery built in the area.

The years long campaign to stop the mining project has attracted unprecedented attention for a small tribal group, receiving support from the British and Norwegian governments, the Church of England, human rights and environmental groups. Survival International, an NGO that promotes indigenous rights, has been at the forefront of the battle to stop the mining. A short film, Mine: Story of a Sacred Mountain, has been widely viewed, helping to promote international support for the Dongria.

Read more about the Dongria and view the film at the Survival International site.

(http://www.survivalinternational.org/)

(Photo: A Dongria Kondh woman picks millet in Niyamgiri, India. Credit © Toby Nicholas/Survival.)

Our essay, “Relationships of war: Mothers, soldiers, knowledge” speaks to problems of knowledge and the cultural and affective separation of home and front, and how gender expectations are used to control knowledge, reinforce secrecy, and shape the national imagination.

The map to the left indicates traditional “Bushmen” areas.

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Outrage as Botswana Bushmen denied water rights

A Botswana judge has ruled that Bushmen who returned to their lands
in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve are not allowed to drill wells for
water. The decision condemns them to having to walk up to 380 km to
fetch water in one of the driest places on earth.

Tourists to the reserve staying at Wilderness Safaris new lodge,
however, will enjoy use of a swimming pool and bar, while Gem Diamonds
planned mine in the reserve can use all the water it needs  on
condition none is given to the Bushmen.

Bushman spokesman Jumanda Gakelebone said, If we dont have water, how are we expected to live?

Please write to Botswanas President Ian Khama at op.registry@gov.bw expressing your outrage. If the e-mail bounces, you can write a paper letter using our easy online tool.

You are receiving this e-mail because you subscribed to Survival International’s monthly e-news.

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In spite of the breathless subtitle, Frantz and Collins have written a carefully researched book that simultaneously traces Khan’s role in the development of the Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program and the often conflicted efforts of the CIA and the IAEA to counter nuclear proliferation–though in the case of the former it should be added “when it was politically expedient”.

The author’s document Khan’s theft of centrifuge technology (essential in enriching uranium to a concentration which can be weaponized) from the Dutch branch of Urenco–a British, German, Dutch consortium set up to enrich uranium for civilian use and make Europe independent of American suppliers.

Khan was hired at the Dutch location in spite of what should have been disqualifying security concerns and then given access to a wide variety of information he was not cleared to see because he spoke both German and Dutch and was involved with translation. He took full advantage, making copies for himself while convincing a junior colleague, employed as a technical photographer, to take detained photographs of various components for him. Khan then leveraged this critical information into a key position in the Pakistani nuclear establishment, ultimately as the head of a laboratory named after him, and enriching himself through kickbacks and side-deals, including the quasi-authorized sale of nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran, and Libya.

Most of the parts used in the precision centrifuges could not be manufactured in Pakistan, so Khan set-up a world-wide procurement network to obtain dual-use components from wherever he could get them. Working first under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto–the charismatic founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party–then under military ruler Zia ul-Haq and his successors, Khan worked a kind of technological miracle, creating a nuclear capability in a country with a literacy rate of 60-percent (at the time).

The above outline is well-known and available from other sources. Where the two journalists shine is in situating Khan in Pakistan. While born outside of the narrow stratum of privilege in his native country–which is one of the reasons he ended up working in Europe in the first place in spite of qualifications that ought to have made him a shoe-in for a job at home–he worked as hard to build his own fortune and reputation as he did at building Pakistan’s bomb. For example, A.Q. kept twenty Pakistani journalists on his payroll, giving them stipends of $175 a month, more than they received from their employer.

Once his myth was established, moreover, it was not just Khan but the Pakistani government and the wider public that worked hard to promote the Khan legend. Following the May 1998 testing of the bomb, Khan was celebrated even as the economy collapsed in response to sanctions. “His face was painted on the back of the wildly decorated and bejeweled trucks that ply the roads and highways of Pakistan” (p. 231).

One of the most bizarre incidents associated with the Khan legend was an operation apparently carried out by Pakistan’s ISI. It involved the book The Islamic Bomb, a 1981 work by Steven Weissman and Herbert Krosney that detailed what was then known about how nuclear technology had spread to Pakistan, India and Israel. Less than flattering to Khan at many points, the book was banned in Pakistan. Then, one day in 1988, critics and dissidents all over the country mysteriously received a copy of the book by courier.

Someone had apparently decided that even the reputation of the work–in those days instantaneous circulation via the internet was not yet possible–was too damaging to Khan and decided to distribute carefully edited versions of The Islamic Bomb. Upon receiving his copy, MIT-educated physicist and nuclear critic Pervez Hoodbhoy noted that while “the work was impressive and thorough… in the chapters about Pakistan [he] kept bumping into passages that seemed at odds with the overall tone of the book. Invariably, the sections praised A. Q. Khan and harshly criticized his rival, Munir Khan” (p. 152). It was only sometime later when a visitor photocopied pages from Hoodbhoy’s and fedExed them back to the United States for comparison that the full extent of the deceit became apparent. The ISI–or someone in the Pakistani government–had gone to the trouble of systematically and secretly redacting a book released by a foreign publisher and then distributed to the country’s small group of critical intellectuals, apparently for  no better reason than to protect A. Q. Khan’s public reputation!

The bulk of the work is actually focused on efforts to track and counter nuclear proliferation, and the authors do a reasonable job of pointing out that many of the obstacles are generated by Western, and particularly American, intelligence agencies that decline to share information and protect proliferating states either for geo-strategic reasons–as when nuclear issues took a backseat to winning Pakistani support for fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan–or to “protect sources” and continue to track the network. At every juncture the CIA and other agencies seemed to underestimate how much they didn’t know, resulting in the hamstringing of international efforts to enforce non-proliferation.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=404341&c=1