I’ve just posted this message to the Media Anthropology Network mailing list:
Dear All
Jay Ruby raised a very important question for discussion about a month ago re:
media anthropology in the US v Europe (see his message below), followed up by
Philipp Budka’s reference to national traditions of anthropological research.................
Continue reading ""Media anthropology in Europe and the US..." »
The BBC has sent six British women to be “second wives” to so-called “tribesmen” in - according to the BBC “some of the world’s most remote communities". “Any anthropologist feels pleased when the hidden peoples of the world get a chance to appear on television, but the BBC series Tribal Wives is misleading", anthropologist Michael Stewart comments in The Guardian.
In this series of posts I’m thinking aloud about where the anthropology of media may (or should) be heading in the coming 15 years, in view of the rapid growth of this subfield since Debra Spitulnik’s often cited review published 15 years ago. I am hoping to be able to recruit guest bloggers for this endeavour once I get some time off in the coming months so we can make this a more dialogical session, but for now I’ll simply limit myself to some cursory opening remarks. (As always, comments and questions are very welcome, but do please bear with me if I’m slow in responding).
In discussing the role of anthropologists in the battlefield I’ve argued that what is needed isn’t so much anthropology as common sense. I find it hard to see how the expert opinion of anthropologists will be taken seriously in an organization which fires Arab experts simply because they are gay. If an organization doesn’t take local knowledge seriously, how much help can an anthropologist provide? This short video by Guardian journalist John D McHugh makes clear what I mean.
Continue reading "Mostly old anthro articles from UC Californi Digital Library..." »
Remember that uncontacted tribe in Brazil? Turns out it was actually discovered in 1910.
One of my favorite bloggers, Ethan Zuckerman, has a nice write-up of a book talk our own Chris Kelty gave over at the Berkman Center:
Hannah Landecker and Christopher Kelty are leaving the department and heading to the Center for Society and Genetics in UCLA. They were lovable people and i only feel regret that i did not take enough number of courses from them. They offered great courses and because i could not make up my mind to get STS courses, i missed an opportunity. However, even their existence was a contribution. As you might already know, Cris gave me the idea of blogging and here I am! Isn't that a big contribution?
And guess who are coming to the department? Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe. Prof. Boyer specializes in media studies and I assume he will get involved with my research.
In the mean time,
E-Seminar on Erkan Saka's working paper
“Blogging as a Research Tool for Ethnographic
Fieldwork”
is now in the Media Network..
and more anthro news follow:
Elitists, isolated in their ivory towers, serving out life terms in self-imposed exile. It’s a great image, if you are writing a comedic novel, or perhaps aiming to produce a take on Great Expectations applied to an academic setting, or likewise some rendition of One Hundred Years of Solitude. One can indeed think of how many of these great novels were produced in solitary conditions, but note, by individuals with a great deal of “noise” in their heads, a great many voices struggling to be heard, in conversation or argument with one another, the author caught somewhere in between the (not so) fictional, allegedly “imaginary” voices.
Stuart Hall's reflections on a life analyzing culture and society
An interview with Stuart Hall, December 2007
COLIN MacCABE
It seems that these are the times for evaluating what happened in the last decades. I have been reading many evaluative inteviews or articles. Here are from wtihin anthropology:
The End(s) of Ethnography: Social/Cultural Anthropology's Signature Form of Producing Knowledge in Transition
George Marcus
EDITORS' OVERVIEW
Anthropology has been vital to recent interdisciplinary endeavors such as feminist studies, postcolonial studies, and science studies, but its own disciplinary core remains “in suspension,” awaiting an infusion of fresh theories and methods, argues George Marcus in an interview published in the February 2008 issue of Cultural Anthropology.
I found a couple of interesting links browsing through the comments section on BoingBoing’s post about the “uncontacted” Amazon tribe Strong just wrote about.
The first is the story of the “Stone Age Tasaday”:
Readers of this blog unfamiliar with the term ‘media anthropology’ may be wondering what this term actually means. This notion has two main acceptations: (1) the anthropological study of media, and (2) the public profile of anthropology, including how the news media report about this field. This blog is primarily concerned with (1), i.e. with research by anthropologists on the sociocultural uses of media such as radio, television, film, print media, the internet, mobile phones, and so on (for anthropology in the news follow this link).
Continue reading ""How to get more young readers? Associated Press turns to anthropologists" »
After revising a little bit, i submitted the paper to the Network and it will be subject to intense criticism/ discussion in the following two weeks. This network is one of the best productive online academic groups I have seen so far.
19 May - 2 June 2008. Erkan Saka (Rice University, USA): Blogging as a research tool for ethnographic fieldwork. (PDF, 280 KB)
Abstract
Comments: Mary Stevens (University College London)
In the mean time, just finished:
The Pedagogical State: Education and the Politics of National Culture in Post-1980 Turkey by Sam Kaplan
In terms of ethnographic merits this book may not meet expectations. However, it is a good review of developments in Turkish education after the 1980 coup, has a good list of references and its content/discourse analyses of the text books maybe very relevant for the interested parties...
Continue reading "EASA Media Anthropology Network discusses Erkan's paper...." »
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.
…
Continue reading ""Academic Blogs: Purposes and Benefits?" »
Continue reading ""Anthropology and Neuroscience Podcasts" »
About four months ago I promised to produce an essay/notes reviewing and summarizing the 04 November, 2007, release of the report by the AAA Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities, whose term of work began in November of 2005. The report is titled “AAA Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities” and is available at:
Continue reading ""Reviewing the AAA’s Report on Anthropology and the Military" »
Certainly more promising in its tone and affect than Strong’s recent case of anthropology villification is Jane Kramer’s New Yorker article about Nadia Abu El-Haj’s tenure case at Barnard (it’s not up on line yet, but I’ll post the link when it is). I think the article is well done, given the near impossible noise to signal ratio that develops around such issues, and especially in Morningside Heights. It gave me a sharper sense of just how powerful Edward Said’s legacy has become in the years since his death. It is, however, a bit light on explaining why her book, Facts on the Ground is innovative, or why it might be interesting to those who want to understand the situation in Israel and Palestine from a new perspective. Although it mentions the basic outlines (the something-more-depressing-than-ironic intertwining of Israeli archeology and Zionism), it doesn’t go very far towards contextualizing why anthropologists are doing this kind of work now, and why the reaction represents not only the ideological extremism of the people who deliberately misinterpret it, but also the failure of anthropology and anthropologists to get their messages out.
In a recent notification of new articles in Cultural Anthropology, I saw this particular item:
Cultural Anthropology 23.1 (February 2008)
IN CONVERSATION: George Marcus and Marcelo Pisarro, “The End(s) of Ethnography: Social/Cultural Anthropology’s Signature Form of Producing Knowledge in Transition”
In an extended abstract of the piece that was circulated by email, the journal editors reveal:
***
found in The Rambo Chart @ haha.nu.
Throughout the world, people are increasingly uploading detailed information about their lives onto the web via tweets, tags, blogs, vlogs, photos, and videos. Even more is uploaded unintentionally, as much of what we do now leaves a digital trail. Emerging technologies such as RFID tags and 2D barcodes transform physical objects into hyperlinks, thereby promising to exponentially increase the amount of digital debris our movements leave behind.
Continue reading ""Digging in the Digital Database of the Mundane" »
We’ve been into this topic a few times before, but this might be the longest list of good ethnographies. CultureMatters-blogger Lisa Wynn not only lists her own favorite books but also several ethnographies that are particularily popular with students.
She writes that she only can think of a small handful of ethnographies that have affected her in the way that a good novel can. This is her list:
There is Desire Left (Knock, Knock). 40 Years of Fine Arts from the Mondstudio CollectionPeter Zimmermann, Mirror, 2004.
An American soldier, interviewed in the early days of the war on route to Baghdad, is asked what she most looked forward to. A Big Mac, large fries and a jumbo Diet Coke, she replied. A few days later, after Baghdad had been captured, I read in the British press an interview with another marine. What struck him most about Iraq? There were no malls, not one, on the road to Baghdad. As the resistance to American occupation gathered coherence and momentum, another was surprised that there were no throngs welcoming them, grateful to be rescued from tyranny; instead, they were dodging sniper bullets while patrolling the sullen, burning city....
Continue reading ""From Post-Imperial Anthropology to Post-Anthropological Empire?" »
The U.S. military is not only interested in employing anthropologists. Now, they have started attending anthropology conferences. Anthropologist Caroline Osella from the University in London and one of the editors of Social Mobility In Kerala, is worried....
Royal Academy of Arts To Present A Major Exhibition Devoted To Lucas Cranach the Elder Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Golden Age, c. 1530
“The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is starting to remind me of the recording industry and their rearguard actions against file-sharing and online dissemination in general", Eric Kansa commented one year ago.
Continue reading ""Military spies invade anthropology conferences?" »
Languages, like peoples, are in a constant battle for survival. Some that eluded the great language cull of the European colonisation of the Americas lose that battle. On Monday the last native speaker of the Eyak language in Alaska, Marie Smith Jones, died at the age of 89. But Smith Jones left an epitaph - her language. She dedicated the last years of a hard life to recording it....
Last week as Kerim, Oneman, and I were having cigars and brandy in the ultra exclusive Savage Minds Gentlemen’s Society and the topic of Barack Obama and his anthropology connection came up, and Kerim eventually convinced me to share my Obama/Anthropology connection.
2007 Highlights
Happy New Year! I’m a bit late with this, but I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight some of our best material from 2007, as I did in 2006....
Postmodern Designer, Founder of Memphis Group, Ettore Sottsass, 90, DiesValentine, portable typewriter - design: Ettore Sottsass, 1969.
Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today [12/19] in Washington D.C. following Monday’s withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government.
... Property ownership in the five state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign [historic owner]. Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property.
From James McDougall’s article, “Sarkozy and Africa: big white chief’s bad memory,” 7 December, 2007, openDemocracy:
The headline event of Sarkozy’s first (and brief) tour of sub-Saharan Africa was a speech, written by special advisor Henri Guaino, delivered “to the élite of Africa’s young people” on 26 July at the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal. The tone and content of the forty-five-minute address were poorly chosen - or deliberately injurious - for the context: a leading African university named for one of the continent’s major intellectuals, whose work, however debatable in some of its conclusions, laid much of the ground for subsequent academic work on pre-colonial African history.
(also at Open Access Anthro)
In response to a request from Jason Cross, anthropologist and lawyer in training at Duke University, I’ve been examining more carefully the available open access resources in and around anthropology. The aim is twofold. First I simply want to draw attention to how much action there has already been in making research open access, both old and new, primary (archival) and secondary. There isn’t a lot, actually, compared to a discipline like economics; but there is a growing array:
This has been noted at other places but it bears mentioning here as well—the ASA has a very promising new blog. The Brits have always been great at producing interesting, readable, and timely work—Anthropology Today is lively and interesting whereas—I kid you not—the only thing I find worth reading in Anthropology News is the obituaries.
While we were wallowing under Php exploits, Culture Matters has been working on a lovely round up of AAA meeting news. Go over and read it now—very thorough....
Usually anthropology is only in the news when some new theory about Neanderthals is announced. But in the past week, anthropology has been all over the news, thanks to the American Anthropological Association meetings in Washington, D.C. which just ended a few days ago.
Dear Colleagues,
It is with great sadness that I must report the death of David Maybury-Lewis on December 2, 2007. David Maybury-Lewis was the Edward C. Henderson Professor Emeritus at Harvard University....
A few people said they’d like to hear about the process of getting my forthcoming edited volume, Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War: The Influence of Foundations, McCarthyism and the CIA published. The road has been a long one, almost exactly five years from inception to (planned) publication, so I decided to take a few posts and describe in as much detail as I can recall how I’ve managed this.
By Maximilian Forte
From Inside Higher Ed, Dec. 3, 2007:. With debate over the role of anthropologists in aiding the military machine a theme threading through their annual meeting, scholars voted Friday to demand that the American Anthropological ...
Anthropologists condemn Defense Department project
Princeton University The Daily Princetonian - NJ, United States
"Could this be the end of anthropology as we know it?" he asked. Though Borneman's fear may seem far-fetched, he's not the only one worried. ...
(post in progress) The American Anthropological Association (AAA) sounds quite diplomatic in its final report on the growing ties between the military and anthropology. The report was released yesterday at the annual AAA meeting and says:.....
"The debate has been a real sign of vibrancy and the seriousness with which we take anthropology and the growing importance of anthropological field work," ...
Culture has become something of a buzz word among America’s national security leaders. Faced with an brutal civil war and insurgency in Iraq , the many complex political and social issues confronted by U.S. military commanders on the ground have given rise to a new awareness that a cultural understanding of an adversary society is imperative if counterinsurgency is to succeed. by Dr. Sheila Miyoshi Jager
Having read through over 60 comments posted thus far on the blog of the American Anthropological Association, devoted to debate over the AAA Executive Board’s decision to condemn anthropological involvement in the Human Terrain System project as a violation of its code of ethics, I am struck by the vain scholasticism of some of the responses critical of the Executive Board.
Francis Bacon's Study from the Human Body Sells For $16.3 Million at Christie's London ;Francis Bacons rent cheque painting Study from the Human Body, Man Turning on the Light
AAA Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities: Final Report (PDF; 151 KB)
Source: American Anthropological Association
Continue reading " "Anthropologists battle over ethics of embeds" »
On this blog a number of arguments have been and will be made that critique ethnography along both well established lines of critique and some newer, and perhaps more incisive critiques. What I want to avoid, however, is a result where only one form of attempting to gain or produce knowledge is dogmatically disqualified, while all others (survey research, content analysis, media study) are left intact as beyond questioning. This is where I establish my own points of view on the continuing need for ethnographic research.
....
[See also: Forte, Maximilian C. (2007). Ethnography. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd ed. Editor-in-Chief, William A. Darty. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA: 99-101]
This week's FP List of the world's worst airports provides a fairly comprehensive catalog of departure-lounge suffering around the world. Unfortunately, a few worthy contenders didn't quite make it in under the word limit. Thankfully, the blog gives us a chance to highlight a few (dis)honorable mentions.. ........
Having consumed a great deal of time on this blog with discussion of anthropologists embedded in counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as multiple posts on anthropology and colonialism, other areas of interest have been neglected where this project is concerned. Let me try to redress that by turning to some mainstream media articles and one online resource that could be helpful in understanding how academic practices can be transformed with the new help of new technologies and the Internet.
SHAO Jing (Nanjing U).
Cultural Horizons Prize
SCA is proud to award the sixth annual Cultural Horizons Prize to
SHAO Jing (Nanjing University)
for his article
“Fluid Labor and Blood Money:
The Economy of HIV/AIDS in Rural Central China”
(Cultural Anthropology Nov. 2006, Vol. 21, No. 4: 535-569).
"Fluid Labor and Blood Money" portrays several overlapping levels of the circulation of human plasma, the origins and consequences of the HIV epidemic, and the author's own involvement in the aftermath during his fieldwork starting in 2003. This ethnographically grounded study of an epidemic shows that “biotechnology broadly defined can be powerfully refracted by local configurations of economy, technology, and social relations” in China’s liberalized economy.
This year's doctoral student jury--Joanna Davidson (Emory U), Maria McMath (Princeton U) and Erkan Saka (Rice U)--writes that the article, "combines rich ethnographic detail and vivid portrayals of real lives with broad and cogent historical, social, economic and cultural analyses. SHAO Jing demonstrates that one mode of ethnographic writing need not be sacrificed or constrained by the other. The writing style is refreshingly clear and powerful; he offers complex theoretical analyses without resorting to obscurantist language. He writes simply and intimately, without giving in to sentimentality or casting characters as “victims” and “perpetrators.” Likewise, he masterfully explores how global neo-liberal policies impact local communities, going well beyond conventional evocations of neoliberalism and simple, suggestive links between the global and the local . . . . SHAO Jing’s article represents the best of a critical, engaged, and imaginative cultural anthropology."
