“Expert” Consulted on RE5 Racism Issue: Not an Expert on Race After All
by Guest Contributor Regina (Brinstar), originally published at Acid for Blood
Recently, VideoGamer.com interviewed an “expert” to ask him whether the imagery in Resident Evil 5 was racist. The academic expert they consulted was Glenn Bowman, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent. Bowman said that Resident Evil 5 is not racist in that interview. Bowman even went so far as to dismiss views that Resident Evil 5 contains racist imagery as “silly”. Major blogs like Joystiq are running wild with the VideoGamer.com interview.
There’s a serious problem here, though. None of these major gaming media outlets have done their homework. Joystiq and the other big games blogs like Kotaku and Destructoid are merely reporting verbatim what VideoGamer.com published, without engaging in actual, investigative journalism. Doesn’t journalism include fact-checking sources?
Let’s take a closer look at Bowman’s academic credentials, experience, and research:
His doctoral field research was carried out on the topic of Christian pilgrimage in Jerusalem between 1983 and 1985 and gave rise to further regionally based interests in shrines, monumentalisation, tourism and – with reference to the Palestinian people – nationalism and conflict, diasporic and local identities, and secularist versus sectarian strategies of mobilisation. He has subsequently carried out a longitudinal study of the mixed Christian-Muslim town of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, which had played a substantial role in the Palestinian intifada (uprising). At present he is continuing his work in Beit Sahour as well as continuing work on art and identity in contemporary Serbia. He is developing comparative work between the Middle East and the Balkans, manifest in ‘Constitutive Violence and the Nationalist Imaginary’ (below), and is currently working on a project investigating historical and contemporary uses of shared shrines in Western Macedonia, Kosova and Albania and in Israel/Palestine.
No mention of Africa, race, or racism.
Taking a look at Bowman’s list of publications (bottom half of page) dating back to when he first began his academic career in 1991, we see no mention of his research on African cultures, racism, or race issues — because there isn’t any.
None of his publications are about racism or race. Nowhere in Bowman’s body of work suggests that he has expertise or research experience in African cultures, colonialism, media studies, or race issues. The setting for Resident Evil 5 is an unknown location on the African continent. His research experience and current work indicate interest primarily in Middle East religious studies. Geography check: the Middle East? Not in Africa. Whilst certain countries geographically located in the northern part of the African continent are sometimes listed as part of the Middle East (depending on who you ask), none of Bowman’s research involves countries or cultures from the part of the African continent that have been cited as being part of the Middle East, such as Egypt. Bowman’s list of publications includes an article he wrote in 2001, which was included in an anthology that mentions Egypt in the title. The article he wrote does not have anything to do with Egypt; it’s about the Bordeaux Pilgrim. Specifically, Bowman’s geographical research interests centre on Israel/Palestine and the Balkans. Furthermore, his topical research specialties focus on religion, nationalism, identity — not race or racism. An academic is judged in large part by their body of published work. Bowman doesn’t seem to be the most qualified academic to discuss race, racism, African colonialism, and African cultures, given the fact that his specialties do not actually involve any of those subjects.
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