How Do You Tell the Ugly Stories?

Most of us experience a lot of things, simply being alive. Good things, bad things, meh things. We tell each other about them, or we don't, depending on whether we find it worth telling about. But sometimes, just sometimes, something really, really ugly happens. Of the sort where you may have to deal with it for the rest of your life. You might not want to tell people, but sometimes they need to know, for whichever reason is applicable. That is not something that anybody can really do anything about, except maybe by fundamentally changing how people treat each other, but I find myself wondering – when to tell? And how?

I Studied This for Five Years. You Have an Opinion

One of my 'favourite' pastimes (as in, not) is when I find myself discussing something I know a lot about with a person who knows … less much about it. Being an anthropologist, 'something I know a lot about' will usually be along the lines of social and cultural determination, how do we define power, what are human rights really. That sort of thing. Gender is one of my favourite topics (for real), and so I spend a lot of time reading about it, thinking about it, researching, how do we understand female sexuality, how do we socially define women? I may not be the most expert in the whole wide world, but I dare say I do know my stuff.

Run for Your Life – before you lose it

Today a little run-through of jealousy in popular culture. Or rather, in a few selected songs. Not your old-style, relatively innocent ”my stomach hurts when Bob/ette is talking to someone who's not me” jealousy, but when it veers into violence and potential death. Jumping from songs to dead people might seem like a long shot, but at least in some cases it isn't that much of a leap.

Society Against the State

In 1648 a bunch of guys sat down and decided that the best way to end wars of religion would be to create states. Sovereign states with sovereign rulers, and what happened inside those states was no one's business but the rulers'. People eventually stopped warring over religion, at least in Europe – they started warring “internationally” instead, as states became nations and saw in themselves something intrinsically unique to their respective nations that must be defended at all costs. Bloodshed ensued. Within the last 100 years the entire planet has been fitted into a neat pattern of nations, states, nation states, term it as you please, nice coloured spaces on the map, characterised by their internal affairs being nobody's business but their own. It is seen as a result of 'development', as something inevitable, as all societies must eventually progress towards having a State, and this is a Good Thing. While we're at last shedding some of the “my genocide is nobody's business but my own” thinking, and people are also beginning to get a grip of why “everybody must develop so as to be as civilised as us” may be deemed offensive, that a state should be inevitable is not so easily forgotten. Historians and other clever people sought out evidence in the sources of history to show why all peoples must eventually develop state structures in order to govern themselves, as not having a ruling power is equal to being Neanderthals, to paraphrase only slightly. Which brings me to what I want to present to you today. Is the State inevitable?