"Academic Blogs: Purposes and Benefits?
Academic Blogs: Purposes and Benefits?
In an article by Andy Guess in Inside Higher Ed titled, “Blogs and Wikis and 3D, Oh My!” (09 May, 2008), there is an interesting section featuring discussions of the nature, purposes and benefits of academic blogging, and some of the lingering suspicions that surround them. I will post a few extracts that I think are worth considering, though one may need to read the complete piece to get a greater sense of the context and a sense of who are the speakers quoted in the article.
Volokh has the characteristics of most successful academic blogs: Its contributors are scholars and experts in a given field, and they use that expertise to provide on-the-spot analysis and running commentary on issues that matter. They interact with readers who comment on posts and build on (or push against) each other’s insights. Not unlike peer review … except on a potentially wider scale, and in public.
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A brush with extinction Around 70,000 B.C., the human population nearly disappeared.
Fieldwork aphorisms
Those kernels of wisdom imparted to students leaving for the field. These are often conveyed in the hallway, or on the phone, or in office hours, from mentor to student; they seem most frequently to circulate after the formal presentation of a research proposal. And I think they often have much more impact than the sophisticated advice transmitted through ‘official’ channels. Sometimes they are very telling. Two off the top of my head:Debating Public Anthropology: American Anthropologist
By Maximilian ForteAmerican Ethnography, the AAA, and the Public Domain
Recently Anthropologi.info blogged a new anthropology site, American Ethnography. American Ethnography is a very pretty site with monthly thematic collections of articles from AAA journals. My initial response was: “wow, how happy will the AAA be to see entire articles they are selling for money on AnthroSource being reproduced on the web for free?” So I was surprised—astonished would be a better word—when Martin, the proprietor of AE, pointed out a paragraph on the AAA website’s permissions page which states that:
"Racist" Buddhist monks hope for "ethnically clean" Tibet?
In his post Not only freedom: the dark ethnic side of the Tibetan Buddhist revolt, anthropologist Gabriele Marranci challenges mainstream images of Tibetans as peaceful and writes about Tibetan racism, ethno-nationalistic dreams, and attacks against muslims in Tibet.
16 articles on Migration and Transnationality in Anthropology News May
Articles on Biometrics, US Refugee policy, children’s migration, transnational students, challenges of multi-sited ethnography and more can be found in the most recent issue of Anthropology News May, a publication by the American Anthropological Association (AAA).
Maurice Bloch: Religion is a Figment of Human Imagination
Why did religions evolve? According to anthropologist Maurice Bloch, there is nothing special with religion. It’s just a product of human imagination - in the same way as nations are, Bloch writes in an article to be published in June, the New Scientist informs.
Research Funding 2.0?
Recently Kevin Kelly wrote a thought provoking post about how artists might function in the internet age.
A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.
Maurice Bloch: “Reluctant Anthropologist” or “Anti-Anthropologist”?
Many thanks again to Lorenz Khazaleh atantropologi.infofor bringing my attention to this fascinating interview with Maurice Bloch, where views are expressed that sit perfectly well with the thrust of the Open Anthropology Project. This also ties in with my response to the comment that I am “ambivalent” about my own work that one can findhere.
Interviewed by Maarja Kaaristo inEurozinein February of this year, Maurice Block makes several statements that I found to be critically relevant.
First, on anthropological knowledge:
CONCEPTUAL Challenges of Multi-Sited Ethnography
(Thanks again to Lorenz Khazaleh andhis blogfor notification of the release of the current issue of Anthropology News.)
In a short commentary titled, “Practical Challenges of Multi-Sited Ethnography“, written by Ulla Berg in Anthropology News (May, 2008), there is one basic limitation that I want to highlight, and some of my commentary might remind readers ofGeorge Marcus’ “no new ideas”argument (parts of which I agree with, and parts of which apply to his own argument).
News on Cambridge Anthropology
William Wyse Chair of Social Anthropology:
The Problem of Post-Conventional Outlaws
By dlendeMinerva money: “…we’re probably not talking tens of millions…”
Via Danger Room, news that the Minerva Project (or Consortium) may not be quite the cash cow for social science research some might have imagined. There was a ‘blogger roundtable’ with Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning, Thomas Mahnken, on Wednesday. (Bloggers were from Kings of War, Blackfive.net, Mountainrunner, COMOPS Journal, and others I gather. So much for the ‘olive branch’: I wonder why weren’t we invited? Transcript of the roundtable here; it is well worth a look for those tracking this issue.) Mahnken fleshed out some numbers in relation to the money question:Culture and Learning to Drink: What Age?
By: Micaela, Richard, Colleen, and Caitlin
In a 1983 landmark study conducted by Harvard psychiatrist Dr. George Valliant, it was found that young men who grew up in homes where alcohol was forbidden at the dinner table were seven times more likely to become alcoholics. The following year, the United States Congress voted to raise the legal drinking age to 21.
