Organized Session, Workshop or Roundtable Title
Kula, Evolution, and Moral Panic: How Emotion Trumps Reason on the Journey to the Common Good
Participation Type
Organized Session
Participant Type
Multi-presenter
Organized Session, Workshop or Roundtable Abstract
Three approaches to human understanding have sought to integrate emotion and reason: Paul MacLean’s 1990 The Triune Brain; Antonio Dmasio’s 1994 Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, and Frans de Waal’s 2005 Our Inner Ape. Although over-simplified, MacLean argued that humans have reasoning neocortical brain processes that are often trumped by the legacy of a housekeeping reptilian brain and emotional mammalian brain. Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis showed how emotions guide reason both positively and negatively, and primatologist De Waal claimed that human reason and morality are both rooted in our emotional limbic and reptilian system, and not just an overlay to a beastly past. Looking at a Presidential campaign year through anthropological lenses provides many examples of how emotion affects reason, from Trump’s alpha displays and calls for the U.S. to be great again, to Carly Fiorina’s monkey pout face in response to insults, to Hillary Clinton’s constant smile and bipedal swagger when Bernie Sanders’ crowds were more passionate and larger. Symposium presenters provide three examples of such emotional ‘trumping. ‘First, Brill, Momchilov, and Miles report how ‘eye for an eye’ strategies consistently trump understandings of balanced reciprocity in Kula Trade simulations. Second, Miles and van der Harst show how emotion-based beliefs trump evidence in defining and accepting evolution. Finally, Van Ness shows how emotional ‘moral panic’ has resulted supermax prisons that are neither humane in terms of democratic values nor efficient and economical in terms of human and financial costs. So any approach to creating the common good through commerce, science education or the criminal justice system needs to acknowledge that feeling often trump thinking and recognize and utilize emotional messages in both research and advocacy.
Organizer
H. Lyn White Miles
At-A-Glance Bio- Organizer
Dr. H. Lyn Miles is a biocultural anthropologist interested in the evolution of human symbol systems, how cutural processes interact with language and evolution, and what orangutans can tell use about language and intelligence. Through her experience as a scientific researcher as well as Chantek’s cross-foster mother, she is convinced of the personhood of enculturated apes and seeks to find them legal protection. She has also conducted preliminary field research with orangutans in Borneo at the Wanariset Research Center, and in the Meratus Forest. Her research is featured in the PBS NOVA program “Signs of the Apes, Songs of the Whales,” and in the Animal Planet production “They Call Him Chantek.”
Type of Session
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
‘Quasi-Kula’: Demonstrating Reciprocity Strategies in a Kula Trade Active Learning Simulation
Presentation #1 Abstract
Marshall Sahlins in Stone Age Economics (1972) identified three forms of reciprocity for trade and gift-giving: generalized, balanced, and negative. Generous balanced reciprocity is used in the Trobriand Island ceremonial Kula trade, described by Bronislaw Malinowski in Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) in which Trobrianders make and exchange red necklaces for white armbands as a means to enhance their symbolic prestige and establish lifelong trading partnerships with distant islands. Since 2010, an anthropology course, Mysteries of the Human Journey, at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga has engaged students in a Kula trade active learning simulation. Students formed small ‘island tribes’ spread out in different buildings on campus, and make and exchange jewelry with other ‘islands’ to acquire prestige items and trading partners. Students are instructed to use Kula balanced reciprocity, rather than “eye for an eye” market value profit strategies. The jewelry produced and trading patterns are evaluated by an independent panel of judges. The results from two trades in 2015-2016 with 165 students are presented. The analysis showed that only 34% of tribes utilized balanced reciprocity although it consistently proved to be the most successful strategy for manufacture and acquisition of prestige items and establishment of trading partners. The majority (45%) used eye for an eye profit strategies, and 21% even used negative reciprocity. The exercise illustrates the difficulty of cross-cultural understanding of communal relationships versus material acquisition, and shows how emotion and self-interest can trump more successful strategies of symbolic economic exchange.
At-A-Glance Bios- Participant #1
Dr. H. Lyn Miles is a biocultural anthropologist interested in the evolution of human symbol systems, how cutural processes interact with language and evolution, and what orangutans can tell use about language and intelligence. Through her experience as a scientific researcher as well as Chantek’s cross-foster mother, she is convinced of the personhood of enculturated apes and seeks to find them legal protection. She has also conducted preliminary field research with orangutans in Borneo at the Wanariset Research Center, and in the Meratus Forest. Her research is featured in the PBS NOVA program “Signs of the Apes, Songs of the Whales,” and in the Animal Planet production “They Call Him Chantek.”
Presentation #2 Title
How Emotion Trumps Evidence in Evolution Science Education in Southeast Tennessee
Presentation #2 Abstract
In a 2011 Science article, Berkman and Plutzer reported that only 28% of U.S. biology teachers straightforwardly describe the evidence for evolution in American high school classrooms. Further, 13% explicitly advocate religious creationism as part of their science class. Thus, nearly three-quarters of U.S. students do not receive appropriate science instruction in evolutionary theory and evidence. A 21-year longitudinal study of the views of East Tennessee college students on evolution and religion was conducted from 1995-2015 which included over 6,000 surveys and a dozen focus groups. Student were identified as: 1) young earth creationists; 2) old earth creationists; 3) theistic evolutionists; 4) spiritual evolutionists; or 5) natural nonreligious evolutionists. Participants were asked to define evolution and a comparison of young earth creationists vs. natural evolutionists showed extreme discrepancies in science understanding. Young earthers understood only one of four elements of evolution theory, the element of change, and exhibited 17 themes including that faith was “fact” and science was “ideas,” that all evolutionists are atheist or anti-God, and that hybridization was a major force of evolution. In contrast, natural evolutionist students understood between two and three elements of evolutionary theory and were able to articulate scientific processes more accurately. Both groups exhibited misunderstandings of human evolution and evolutionary processes. This supports studies that show that deeply felt emotional beliefs overpower learning for both students and teachers especially in Tennessee which ranks lowest in acceptance of evolution in the U.S., and emotional barriers to education must be addressed.
Presentation #3 Title
Supermax Prisons, and the Common Good.
Presentation #3 Abstract
Bronislaw Malinowski makes the point in Crime and Custom in Savage Society (1926), that societal rules for keeping order are not a problem per se, but matters of “how the rules become adapted to life” can be problematic. One contemporary case in the United States is the longstanding ‘moral panic’ over street crime, illegal drugs, and terrorism. Justice policies directed at controlling these problems have increased the number of crimes for which individuals are incarcerated and the length of prison sentences. The resultant population explosion in prisons and jails means that 2.2 million individuals are now behind bars, with 25% of black males likely to be incarcerated during their lifetimes. Prison overcrowding led to disorder in many prisons, and with an influx of Muslims suspected of terrorist leaning or terrorism, such as the “Shoe bomber,” supermax prisons were re-invented to house prisoners for long periods of time in self-contained single cells, living 22-24 hours a day with no opportunity for social interaction. This paper critically examines the emotion-influenced rationales put forward for maintaining supermax prisons and the symbolism and mythology surrounding them that has undermined the public good.
Keywords
Art and Material Culture, Bureaucracy, Civil society, Cultural Politics, Discrimination, Education, Evolution, Legal and Political Anthropology, Markets, Prisons, Reciprocity, Religion, Science
Start Date
4-8-2016 1:30 PM
End Date
4-8-2016 3:00 PM
‘Quasi-Kula’: Demonstrating Reciprocity Strategies in a Kula Trade Active Learning Simulation
Big Sandy Conference Center - Tech Room 02
Marshall Sahlins in Stone Age Economics (1972) identified three forms of reciprocity for trade and gift-giving: generalized, balanced, and negative. Generous balanced reciprocity is used in the Trobriand Island ceremonial Kula trade, described by Bronislaw Malinowski in Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) in which Trobrianders make and exchange red necklaces for white armbands as a means to enhance their symbolic prestige and establish lifelong trading partnerships with distant islands. Since 2010, an anthropology course, Mysteries of the Human Journey, at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga has engaged students in a Kula trade active learning simulation. Students formed small ‘island tribes’ spread out in different buildings on campus, and make and exchange jewelry with other ‘islands’ to acquire prestige items and trading partners. Students are instructed to use Kula balanced reciprocity, rather than “eye for an eye” market value profit strategies. The jewelry produced and trading patterns are evaluated by an independent panel of judges. The results from two trades in 2015-2016 with 165 students are presented. The analysis showed that only 34% of tribes utilized balanced reciprocity although it consistently proved to be the most successful strategy for manufacture and acquisition of prestige items and establishment of trading partners. The majority (45%) used eye for an eye profit strategies, and 21% even used negative reciprocity. The exercise illustrates the difficulty of cross-cultural understanding of communal relationships versus material acquisition, and shows how emotion and self-interest can trump more successful strategies of symbolic economic exchange.