The Power of Cuture and its Lancet : Ethnology. Hookah as a Globe-Trotter (La puissance de la culture et son bistouri: l’ethnologie. Le narguilé...)

France’s “Haute Culture” (*) shows how the Narghile (Hookah, Shisha) is not a “waterpipe”™ but much more:

READ THIS (includes a video on how narghile glass bases are made in Novy Bor, Tchecoslovaquia).

Therefore, the French Ministry of Culture values ethnological research on hookah (**). We welcome this reaction because this issue has been medicalized, particularly through the use of the clannish “waterpipe”™ neo-word. This functionalist term is in fact highly reductionist (ethnologically speaking), nominalist (on a philosophy of science level) and commercial (linked with the Pharmaceutical industry).

The use of “waterpipe”™ was even imposed as a condition for a manuscript to be considered for “peer-review” by certain biomedical journals... In other words, this clannish word is an editorial trademark, that of a clan. It is behind the rapid fire like famous equations: 1 Hookah Equals 100, 200 cigarettes…

Ethnologists and Anthropologists of the World, Unite ! Resist obscurantism !

Goebbels said (approximately): "when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun" and Woodie Guthrie used to write on his guitar: "This machine kills fascists"...

(*) "Sophisticated Culture". Please forget about “Haute-Couture” (High Fashion Dressmaking) for a moment...

(**)

«La collection électronique - éditée par le ministère de la Culture et de la Communication - est destinée à valoriser les recherches ethnologiques auprès d'un large public et à exposer sous une forme didactique et attractive les collectes et travaux menées en France et à l'étranger. Initiée par le musée des civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée, ouverte aux institutions spécialisées en ethnologie, la collection donne à voir, à comprendre et à écouter une large sélection de documents visuels et audiovisuels.»

Read ALSO: Ziauddin SARDAR's unpolitically correct message in The New Stateman (June 21, 2007): Let my son and me teach you how to smoke

READ ALSO (in FRENCH): Une France propre et grise ? (par Stenograf: "Le Fumoir: autour de la clope") [Clean and Charcoal-Grey France (by Stenograf: The Smoking Room and beyond its Smoking Screen]

Image : Courtesy of the French Ministry of Culture

YOU ARE NOT ON THE HOME PAGE of the OBSERVATORY on HOOKAH and HEALTH (Narghile, "Waterpipe"™, Health, Risks, Dangers, Diseases, Tar, Nicotine, Cancer). CLICK HERE to go there !