Because It Can Help Preserve Cultural Heritage Important for Understanding and Social Benefit

February 22, 2022 by Wendy Naus

Cultural heritage is today threatened on a number of fronts.

Embodied in the form of ancient archaeological sites and historical buildings, collections of antiquities, artworks, artifacts and archives, and as the lifeways of contemporary communities, cultural heritage comprises features of continuing existence and past accomplishment recognized by a social group as an enduring symbol of its identity. Benign neglect, devastating accidents, major natural disasters—and increasingly climate change—all challenge our ability to preserve cultural heritage. Think of earthquakes in Haiti and Italy and their ruin of historic buildings and galleries; remember the fires that wreaked havoc on Notre Dame and destroyed collections at the National Museum in Brazil; and imagine the loss of living cultural traditions among Inuit communities seeing massive warming in the Arctic. Social persecution, terrorism, and armed conflict too endanger the preservation of cultural heritage. Consider the burning of historical manuscripts in Timbuktu; recall ISIS blowing up the ancient trading center of Palmyra, the Taliban looting and trafficking ancient treasures; and recognize the Myanmar government’s persecution of the Rohingya for their religious and ethnic ways and the Chinese government for doing the same to Uighurs and Tibetans.

Because Money Makes The World Go ’Round

March 24, 2020 by Wendy Naus

I often get asked questions like, “What is an anthropologist like you doing studying money? I thought that was the domain of economists!” The archaeological and ethnographic record is full of objects, texts, and records of promises humans have used for millennia to mark transactions with one another and figure value. It’s true that I enjoy working with and thinking about those objects, and among my favorite places are the money galleries in museums around the world and at the regional branches of the U.S. Federal Reserve. But the anthropology of money is more than an archive of the arcane. Understanding practices like bridewealth, involving objects like the tevau of the Santa Cruz Islands, can shed light on how contemporary money is far more than a neutral medium of exchange. This matters for product design, financial literacy programming, and macroeconomic policy, too.

Indeed, now that the world is in a global pandemic caused by the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus, what people do with money and its technologies has acquired a new kind of significance. Although the virus apparently does not survive for long on fibrous materials like cloth and paper, reports have surged of Chinese and other officials ordering the disinfecting of banknotes to prevent its spread. The fintech industry conference organization Money 2020, promoting its (almost certainly to be cancelled) next event, proclaimed in an email that the pandemic would usher in the end of cash and the era of digital payments—despite the fact that most in-person digital payments (at your local take-out restaurant now, for example) rely on plastic and metal cards and point of sale devices, touched by many hands, on which the virus can survive for several hours. And in Kenya, the authorities are recommending all Kenyans use mobile phones to pay—about which, more below.

Because Collaborating Across Cultures and Beyond Boundaries Leads to Progress on the World’s Biggest Issues

December 17, 2019 by Wendy Naus

On Sept. 25, 2015 the United Nations (UN) established a historic plan entitled “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” which was agreed upon by the 193 Member States of the UN. The Agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), each one addressing a critical world issue. Many of these, such as climate change, poverty, equal rights and quality education, are directly relevant to the field of psychology. Given the effort addressing the SDGs will require, it is important that psychology itself unite as a science and profession and join with other disciplines in order to reach the 2030 objectives.

How formidable is the challenge we are facing?

Recent data suggest it is extraordinary:

The summer of 2019 was the hottest in history in locations ranging from Anchorage, Alaska to Paris, France.
As of March of this year, the UN reported that only six countries truly give men and women equal rights.
In many parts of the world, efforts to achieve global education are literally starting from the ground up due to a lack of classrooms, supplies, trained teachers and opportunities for children with disabilities.
Progress has been made to end poverty, in that extreme poverty fell from 11% in 2013 to 10% of the world's population by 2015. That progress has, however, slowed and the goal of ending poverty by 2030 has been brought into question.