Read the Nashville Post's Q&A: Ted Fischer of Vanderbilt on Social Entrepreneurship and Mani+
Ted Fischer is professor of anthropology and director of the Center
for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University. Over a five-year
period, he teamed with Steve Moore (head of Middle Tennessee-based
Shalom Foundation) and multiple VU students on a malnutrition-oriented
and social enterprise effort called NutriPlus, which produces the
supplement, Mani+.
The supplement (a fortified nut paste that provides calories,
protein, fat, vitamins and minerals essential to brain development in
babies and toddlers) is used to specifically address the nutritional
deficiencies seen in Central American children. It is the first
ready-to-use supplementary Food (RUSF) to be both locally produced and
locally sourced in Guatemala City, Guatemala, creating local jobs and
supporting local farmers.
The new facility (read more here)
opened on Sept. 23 and will eventually mass produce Mani+. Eventually,
Fischer and Moore hope to produce 25 tons of Mani+ a month, reaching
about 25,000 children.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” And yet, for much of its history, it has (understandably) focused on eradicating disease and infirmity. There is a move afoot with the WHO to focus more on wellbeing as broadly conceived in its charter. Nils Fietje and colleagues at WHO-Europe have been looking lately at “Cultural Determinants of Health,” a project I have advised.
While there is a growing understanding that “culture” plays a crucial role in health and development, the concept as it is invoked generally relies on very traditional definitions. Common definitions of culture in public health understand it to be “shared values, beliefs, and practices.” Note that here “culture” is used as a noun, denoting bounded groups defined by lists of traits.
What is missing from such definitions is the human element: real human beings constructing their lives in active and dynamic ways.The traditional static definition (the most common one deployed in public health contexts today) usually portrays culture as an obstacle to health.
But we should see cultural forms as opportunities, not as obstacles, to health
A human-centered approach to health and wellbeing, should adopt contemporary understandings of culture as dynamic, future oriented, and driven by agency. We in anthropology now see culture as much more of a fluid process, a process rather than a thing. Cultural actors are always improvising, actively creating meaning out of the resources at hand.
We have also traditionally put too much emphasis on the historical determinants of culture and adherence to tradition. My view is that we should think of cultural orientations not just as not endowments but as future-oriented desires. Arjun Appadurai defines culture as “a dialogue between aspiration and sedimented traditions.”
In this view, culture opens the door for new opportunities for engaging communities and understandings of well-being.
Mike Pesca, in one of his artful spiels on The Gist podcast, punctures the conventional wisdom that we Americans want folksy presidential candidates, that we yearn for a leader just like us, someone we can relate to, imagine having a beer with. While we do like candidates to be down-to-earth (perhaps echoes of our anti-monarchical national origins), Pesca convincingly argues that what we really want is not a leader like us but one who is like our better selves -- not someone who plays to our fears and prejudices but someone who can embody our virtuous aspirations.
Indeed. As I argue in The Good Life: Aspiration, Dignity, and the Anthropology of Wellbeing, we aspire to be certain sorts of people -- a key part of our identity is not just who we are, but who we want to be. Our aspirations reflect certain sorts of values, what matters most to us in the big scheme of things. These aspirations, and our better selves, can be undermined by short-term gains and hedonic pleasures. And so we need leaders to remind us of our better selves and guide us down the often more arduous path of long-term personal and collective fulfillment.
For these same reasons, we also need rules to hep us be our better selves. A recent RadioLab episode (Nazi Summer Camp) looked at how the U.S. treated the 500,000 or so German and Japanese POWs in U.S. camps. It turns out we treated them exceedingly well, fully following the letter and spirit of the Geneva Convention, even when we saw that the Japanese and Germans were not so scrupulous in their adherence. Significantly, we treated the U.S. citizens of Japanese descent much worse at the internment camps. As U.S. citizens, paradoxically, there were no international rules to govern their treatment, and the country showed it worse side. Similar examples of how rules can help us be the sort of people we say we want to be can be found in Lynn Stout's excellent book Cultivating Conscience and in my book The Good Life.
We often speak of "capitalism" or "the market" as if they are singular things. We are comfortable talking about how the economy is doing, if "it" is up or down today. And in this globalized world it would seem that it makes little difference if the "it" we refer to is in Berlin or London or New York or Shanghai.
Yet there are huge differences in the varieties of capitalism practiced in these places. Looking beyond the big boards, we find systems wrapped up in their own histories and politics and moral values.
To understand the German form of capitalism, it is helpful to learn a few key words:
Sparpolitik: what we term "austerity," the Germans refer to in a much more positive light as "savings policy," invoking wise stewardship more than miserly witholding. So when the Germans are negotiating with the Greeks these days about getting out of debt, they see Sparpolitik as a value that should be desired as much as an austerity to be endured.
Ordoliberalism: it stumbles over the tongue the way a good German word should. It takes inspiration from the liberalism of the Austrian School in its heyday, with a value on personal liberty and a skepticism of central planning. That the liberal part. But the “ordo” part is, as you would suspect, an “ordered” (i.e. regulated) liberalism, largely based on the principles of Mitbestimmung.
Mitbestimmung: ("co-determination") is a system of labor relations that treats labor as stakeholders alongside capital and management; built around "works councils," tiered organizations of employee representatives (blue and white collar) elected by their peers; through works councils labor holds (by law) 50% of corporate supervisory board seats.
Mittelstand businesses, small
to medium sized enterprises that are often family or otherwise privately
owned, and comprise the export engine of the German economy. Many specialize in high value, high quality engineered products. The Mittlestand have a reputation for honoring a commitment to
their employees, embracing the German system of stakeholding and
co-determination.
Kurzarbeit ("short work") program provides government subsidies
to
companies to keep their employees on the payroll but reducing their
working hours; in the financial crisis this allowed companies to keep
workers, reducing their productivity but allowing them
to keep the talent they have built up, to save it for better times.
Solidarität ("Solidarity") is is a value
extolled by the political left and right in Germany; the civic virtue
that we are all in this together, and that living in a society together
requires certain sacrifices for the common good.
Recent protests in Guatemala--organized through social media and that successfully forced the Vice- president to resign--recall the Arab Spring of 2011. Known as the "Land of Eternal Spring," politically Guatemala is best characterized by tyranny, violence, and, most recently, narco-fueled corruption. Indeed, Guatemala's political scene eternally teeters on the edge of farce--it would be comedic if it were not so damn tragic in terms of real human suffering.
Francisco Goldman, in his masterful book The Art of Political Murder, shows how political power in Guatemala acts with such impunity as to border the magical realism of Latin American fiction. (Goldman examines the 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, just days after the commission he led released a scathing report on military culpability in Guatemala's civil war atrocities.)
Even more bizarre was the 2009 murder of lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg (see David Grann's brilliant dissection of the case in the New Yorker). Days before his assassination, Rosenberg had recorded a video predicting his death and accusing the then-President and First Lady of orchestrating it. Protestors were on the streets then, too, although in fewer numbers. And, in the end, it turned out that Rosenberg had commissioned his own assassination (in order to shine a light on the corruption coming from the President's office and family).
Everyone agrees that corruption is a major problem. Indeed, the country considered itself so corrupt that it agreed to charter the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) in 2007. CICIG, with UN backing, is a body of international jurists authorized to conduct investigations and build cases for charges filed in Guatemalan courts.
CICIG's explicit goal is to dismantle the parallel power structures of organized crime, narco-traffickers, and
former military fraternities. CICIG has been instrumental in the arrests of a former president (money laundering), two national police chiefs (corruption), the head of the anti-narcotics agency (drug trafficking), and number of other well-placed officials.
Its latest investigation resulted in the current (2015) protests.
The scandal, known as "La Linea" (see Guatemalan Chimney's excellent overview here) emerged when CICIG announced
47 arrest orders for a massive tax evasion scheme, including superintendent of
SAT (equivalent of our IRS commissioner) and the Vice-president’s personal
secretary (named as the ring leader of the organization). The group has a special phone number (la linea) to avoid duties and a shell corporation to accept the estimated $130 million in payments for services.
The Vice-president (Roxana Baldetti) and her secretary (Juan
Carlos Monzón) were in South Korea at the time of the arrests, and Monzón refused to return to Guatemala. Wire tap transcripts make numerous references to an unnamed co-conspirator,
referred to as “La Número 2,” “La Senora” or “La ‘R’,” widely believed to be Baldetti.
On May 8th, to the surprise of many jaded observers, including your correspondent, the normal wall of impunity crumbled, and Baldetti was forced to resign. Presidential elections are later this year; if a clean candidate could capture the energy of these protests, this could be a watershed moment for Guatemala. A new Spring.
LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW HERE ON WELLCASTS Ted Fischer, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies, discusses the “Good Life,” and why it is important to focus on what matters most.
Janet McCutchen: Welcome to this edition of the Vanderbilt University Health and Wellness Wellcast. I am Janet McCutchen with Work/Life Connections. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Ted Fischer who is Professor of Anthropology and the Director of Center for Latin American Studies. He also is an adviser to the World Health Organization on well-being. Dr. Fischer, thank you for participating in our Wellcast.
Dr. Ted Fischer: I am so happy to be here.
Janet McCutchen: I wanted to begin by asking you, I think, an important question as it relates to our particular department, Work/Life Connections, as part of Occupational Health. We are designed to help all of Vanderbilt’s faculty, physicians, and staff reach a better level of well-being. What is the key finding of your cross-cultural research on how to be well?
Dr. Ted Fischer: Well, that is a great question, and yes, because we so often think about well-being as tied to certain things. Income is a big one. “If I made a little bit more money, boy, I could be happier.” Health is another, and these are all important things. Income is important, health is certainly important, physical security is important, relationships are important, but beyond that, it is having a larger purpose in life that we are committed to, having a balance between these things, between our work life and our family life, relationships. Investing time in relationships turns out to be really, really important to our sense of well-being. So, well-being is more than just not being ill. It is being well in all of these aspects of one’s life, one’s physical health, one’s mental health, one’s social standing.
Janet McCutchen: Well, we know that you have done a lot of cross-cultural research, and you have an excellent book, one of several, that is out now entitled “The Good Life.” What is the good life and
how can we learn to focus on what matters versus just looking at well-being from a quantitative perspective, right? I live in such and such dollar house. I need to lose X amount of pounds. Help us define that from that cross-cultural perspective.
Dr. Ted Fischer: Yeah, and again a great question because we do so often attach our hopes and dreams to these things, a little bigger house, a little nicer car, and yet often, those are not the most
important things, they are not. In fact, I can decide they are not the most important things to our sense of well-being. We do find the cross culture is a sense of dignity and fairness that I am treated with dignity. In my workplace, I am free from discrimination, but even more than that sort of absence of negative, free from discrimination, people respect what I do. Whatever it may be, a sense of dignity is really important and a sense of being committed to a larger purpose in our lives, and that can be something very specific of “I am going to master this craft the best that I can be; if I am a knitter, I am going to be the best, I am going to make this design, just the best way that I can;
or, and this is nice for those of us working in either the medical side or the university side, we are part of the larger project, right? We are making people better, we are building future citizens and leaders,
and so there is something bigger beyond just my weekly or monthly paycheck that motivates me.
Janet McCutchen: And you found those results as far afield from Germany all the way to the Mayan culture in Guatemala. Tell me a little bit about that experience. What did you discover?
Dr. Ted Fischer: That’s right, and so part of the idea behind this research was, “Okay, we all want to live the good life, but we differ and sometimes violently on what the good life is and how best to
achieve it. What is the path to the good life?” So, I said, “Well, let’s look at some really radically different places. The US for sure, but let’s look at Germany, another country, another wealthy country, another developed country, and see what they think about the good life, and let’s look at Guatemala, a poor country, a country inhabited largely by rural Mayan farmers, and what do they see.” Lots of differences as you might imagine, I mean these are radically different cultures, but I
think what is most interesting are the similarities. The sense of people aspire to something a little bit better in their lives and those aspirations, being able to cultivate those aspirations, and crucially
believing there is a real chance that I could achieve those, not a guarantee. I grew up, I might have said I wanted to be the president of the United States, I am not president of the United States. It is not
in the cards for me now. So, it is not that you are going to achieve every dream that pops into your head, but you live in a world in which if I work really hard and I am a little lucky and the stars align, this could be achievable. That is really important for people. If you feel like you are in a dead‑end job, if you feel like for whatever reason that again discrimination sometimes or just sort of the economic circumstances in which one was born or raised in, if you feel like there is no way out, then it leads to this frustration that can turn into violence and depression and …
Janet McCutchen: Am I hearing then there is a certain position of hope involved? So, it is not just a matter of what you think you would like to achieve. It is having the aspiration, that hope, that sense of possibility, and also having systems and economies that support that.
Dr. Ted Fischer: Absolutely, and that is a great way of putting it, is hope exactly, that we need to have hope. I think it is fundamental to the human condition, this sort of hope, and it is what
keeps us going, yes, and crucially as you said also that there are structures that we would call in anthropology and sociology institutional structures that can help that along.
Janet McCutchen: So, when we look at this mind-set with respect to wellness and we look at this application to our lives, what is something that we might be able to implement right now to kind of jump start of our own personal journey toward the good life?
Dr. Ted Fischer: That is a great question. And of course, we academics, we would like to stay in the clouds and in the ivory tower, not make practical recommendations always, but there are some lessons I think that we can learn. One is in thinking about going forward in one’s life our plans, New Year’s resolutions, or plans for the next 5 years, or our hopes for children. It is important for us to step back from the things that might seem so pressing in the moment. Sure, I want to lose a few pounds; sure, I need to stop smoking; sure, I need to do all of these things; and yes, I am not saying that those are not important, those are really important as well; but it is also important for us to step back and think what is really important in life, right? What am I going to remember in 10 years’ time? Is it going to be this little raise that I got this year? We would all like to have raises, and that is well and good, nothing wrong with that.
Janet McCutchen: Yes, we are knocking that. We want Vanderbilt to know. We are not opposed to that!
Dr. Ted Fischer: Absolutely. At the same time, I need to spend more time with my family, and research shows that we remember experiences more than things much more vividly, and so while we might attach our short‑term hopes to that nice suit or dress or that nicer car or these things that cost money, actually in 20 years, we will much more vividly remember that night we stayed up late with the family and watched a movie or played a game or that trip that we took together and did something, and so investing in relationships and investing in experiences is really important and as important as income in many ways.
Janet McCutchen: Outstanding. So, not only for our listeners, but evidently cross‑culturally, that is a consistent thing among humanity.
Dr. Ted Fischer: That’s right.
Janet McCutchen: That’s a great way to jump start, I think more reading. You have books out, you have a blog as well, and what is your blog again? Remind our listeners of your blog.
Dr. Ted Fischer: They can reach it at tedfischer.org .
Janet McCutchen: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today.
Paraguay can't catch a break. It is where a 19th century war wiped out half the male population; one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the hemisphere; 60 years of military dictatorship and one party rule, a brief interlude from which ended (kangaroo court style) in 2012. And it is landlocked.
Paraguay should be the most miserable place on earth -- and yet a recent Gallop poll shows that it is the happiest, at least in terms of a positive emotional feeling (what we term "hedonic happiness").
In fact, all of the top ten countries on Gallop's Positive Experience Index this year are in Latin America. Guatemala (#4), Honduras (#5), and El Salvador (#9) all make the list -- and yet this Central American triangle is by far the most violent place on earth right now. What gives?
If Job were a country, it would have to be Guatemala. This little land
(the size of Tennessee) suffers plagues of biblical proportions so
frequently as to become mundane if not banal. Seismic instability gives rise to the picturesque landscape, and the
lush valleys are shadowed by active volcanoes and lay on top of major
fault lines. And, looking a bit beyond the verdant fields and colorful
dress of the natives, we find crushing poverty.
The murder rate in Guatemala City is 108
per 100,000; this is twice the rate for Baghdad; the comparable figures
for New York and Berlin are 6.5 and 1.5. Over 1 in every thousand people
in Guatemala City is killed every year—and virtually no one is
prosecuted.
And yet, Guatemalans report high levels of quotidian happiness. As I argue in my new book The Good Life, this is partly explained through adaptation to circumstances -- our hedonic happiness is relative to the norms of daily life. We adjust our daily expectations to what
is “reasonable” for us and our circumstances, and adapt our daily contentment
and hedonic happiness to that norm. It is also a function of culture, of aspirations and visions of the future.
A lot gets lost in translating the lived experiences of
wellbeing and deprivation (joy and pain, hopes and fears) into the numerical
metrics of such rankings. From an anthropological perspective, what is lost is
often what is most important: a subjective understanding of what people value,
what their view of the good life is and could be, the pathways they see for
realizing their aspirations. Perhaps the subjective aspects of wellbeing are
fundamentally different from the more objective and material factors (such as
income and health), even if those material conditions partially determine the
horizons of one’s aspirations.
Americans are drinking much less coffee than they did in the 1940s
and 1950s — down by almost half from a peak in 1946. And such changing
trends in Northern countries have profound impacts in the global South
where coffee is produced.
The sharp U.S. decline has leveled off
in recent years, buoyed by a dramatic rise in specialty coffee (defined
as scoring above 80 on a 100 point cupping scale). The very best of
these specialty roasts are what the cognoscenti term "Third Wave
coffees." (Barista Parlor's Golden Sound coffee shop in Nashville, TN is pictured at right.)
Retailing for $20-$50 a pound (and going much higher),
third wave coffees usually come from single farms, with provenance,
terroir, and cup quality discussed in the language of fine wines.
Coffee's complex flavour profile is especially sensitive to climate,
moisture, and soil conditions; and third wave coffees are varietals
provenanced from single estates. . . .Read full article on PopAnth here
In a recent interview on Wisconsin Public Radio, I made the case that our happiness depends on the happiness or the well-being of people around us. We often think of happiness and wellbeing as an individual responsibility, a view fueled by self-help books and pop psychology. But actually, wellbeing is tied up with aspirations, morals,
dignity and a sense of purpose. In order to feel those things, the right
social structures have to be in place. Read and/or hear the interview here http://www.wpr.org/why-one-scholar-says-happiness-isnt-personal-responsibility
Arthur Demarest, professor of archaeology at Vanderbilt and a student of the collapse of civilizations, says that in looking at our own
society: "we are in trouble."
Arthur
points out that the failure rate for great civilizations is 100%. It is a question not of “if” but when. He says that an "ideology of long-term thinking and lower expectations — a change in
world 'attitude'— seems to me to be the only way out of the 21st century giant and precarious 'bubble' that now is Western civilization."
The end of the year is always a time of reflection of what we have done and what we have left undone. And, of course, it’s time to start thinking about those resolutions for 2015 and what we will do differently.
Our New Year’s resolutions usually target minor vices – eat fewer snacks, drink less, stop smoking, exercise more – whatever your particular self-admonitions may be. But it is too easy to get lost in the particulars – and in the negatives.
In setting out our resolutions, we should first step back and take stock of what it is that we really want, what we consider the good life to be, and then think about how best we might achieve it.
Well-being is more than just being well
Fellow anthropologist Arjun Appadurai encourages us to be driven by an “ethics of possibility” – hope, aspiration, optimism – and not just the “ethics of probability” – costs and benefits, risk management, and systematized rationalities. We can be pragmatic, but let’s not allow that pragmatism to kill our dreams of how things could be better.
I’ve spent the last few years studying what contributes to the good life – the elements of well-being – for folks around the world. I’ve talked to rural Maya coffee farmers in Guatemala and urban supermarket shoppers in Germany, as well as Americans from all walks of life. I’ve looked at notions of well-being in Mozambique, Brazil and China. I found that income is important, but not as important as we might first think. Health and security are also necessary, but insufficient, for living a fulfilled life.
Well-being, it turns out, is about more than just being well. It also requires strong family and social relations, a sense of dignity in our lives and fairness in our opportunities, and commitments to larger purposes.
For example Miguel, a 43-year-old Maya coffee farmer in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, I met during my research has benefited in recent years from the boom in high-end coffee in the US. He says that life is good right now – even if we might characterize his circumstances as extremely impoverished. He finds a dignity in owning his own land, in growing quality coffee that commands a decent price. He is committed to providing his children with more opportunities in life, and that endows his hard labor with a larger purpose.
Such large purposes may take many different forms. German shoppers who buy organic and fair trade products see this as a way of linking consumption to moral projects of ecological stewardship and social solidarity. Mastering a craft, political activism, even religious extremism – all are ways we give larger meaning to life.
Based on this research, there are some lessons to take away for our New Year’s resolutions. First, we need to ask what is really important in our lives – and how we can align what we do with those values. Then we should commit, or recommit, ourselves to larger purposes that go beyond self-interest. These could be grand (changing jobs to something more meaningful) or modest (cooking more meals at home for the family) — the crucial thing is that they are about more than just getting ahead.
Good experiences make good memories.Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters
Lessons for a happy New Year
In fact, sometimes being less productive economically can make us better off in terms of wellbeing. Filipe Campante and David Yanagizawa-Drott found that in Muslim countries the fasting and observances during Ramadan had a negative impact on GDP growth, but that individuals also reported being happier and more satisfied with their lives. Giving something up for a greater good – and just giving more broadly – is deeply rewarding.
Second, we should be generous with the time we invest in family and social relations. Material goods usually bring only fleeting happiness, and yet we often pin our hopes and dreams on the accumulation of things we hope will make us happy. Focusing on relationships and experiences adds much more to our long term long-term life satisfaction. Across cultures, we find that strong social relations and the amount of time spent with family are very good predictors of overall wellbeing.
For many in the US, this means adjusting our work/life balance. In Germany, there is a clear distinction between work and play. Germans are more productive than Americans when at work, but they also work less and guard their time off. At Volkswagen, managers have demanded that Blackberry servers be turned off after working hours so that they will not be expected (or tempted) to respond on their own time. Americans spend much more time at work than in many other industrialized countries – around 1800 hours per year on average, compared to around 1400 hours for Germans. In 1930 John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that by now productivity would be so high, the average work week would be only 15 hours. And yet our material wants have outpaced even our dramatic productivity gains.
Finally, we should take time to step back from our culture of busy-ness and getting ahead to appreciate what we already have. It may be human nature to want more, but the good life also rests on gratitude and purpose.
In fact, all of the top ten countries on Gallop's Positive Experience Index this year are in Latin America. Guatemala (#4), Honduras (#5), and El Salvador (#9) all make the list -- and yet this Central American triangle is by far the most violent place on earth right now. What gives?
The sharp U.S. decline has leveled off
in recent years, buoyed by a dramatic rise in specialty coffee (defined
as scoring above 80 on a 100 point cupping scale). The very best of
these specialty roasts are what the cognoscenti term "Third Wave
coffees." (Barista Parlor's Golden Sound coffee shop in Nashville, TN is pictured at right.)
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