First days of AAA meetings. Live coverage at Twitter (#AAA09)

I haven’t been to AAA meetings for three years now but I will probably return next year. But I feel like I will get quite a coverage as anthropologist certainly discover new media…

Annual Meeting Bloggers & Tweeters:

The following twitterers and bloggers will be covering the upcoming AAA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. Visit their feeds to receive up-to-date information about events, sessions, exhibits, etc.

Tweeters (#AAA09)

• AmericanAnthro (AAA)
• Erica Fontana
• Lynne Goldstein
• Sarah Grant
• Kevin Karpiak
• Charles Menzies
• Denice Szafran

Blogs

• AAA
• The Ideophone
• Life at the Interface
• Anthropoliteia
• Forests & Oceans for the Future

?Righteous Dopefiend? Exhibit during AAA Annual Meeting

The Penn Museum?s new exhibition, Righteous Dopefiend: Homelessness, Addiction and Poverty in Urban America, by Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg, will open for AAA Annual Meeting attendees in Philly on Dec 4, 7:00-9:00 pm , and for the general public on Dec 5.

Photograph from the exhibition Righteous Dopefiend: Homelessness, Addiction and Poverty in Urban America, December 5, 2009 through May 2010 at the Penn Museum. © Jeff Schonberg 2009.

Reflections on the Soon-to-be Released CEAUSSIC Report

from American Anthropological Association by Brian

Folklorist and anthropologist Bess Lomax Hawes dies at 88
South Coast Today
Bess Lomax Hawes, a musician and folklorist who tapped into the legacy of her influential family of archivists and became a prominent anthropologist at what

Human Terrain Systems, Anthropologists and the War in Afghanistan
CounterPunch
But anthropology is not political science, and anthropologists have different commitments to those who share their lives and vulnerabilities with them. …

2012: The Dangers of Mayan Quiche

The greatest threat to the future of humankind has been revealed. It is quiche. Again. You remember  the social threats of quiche, don?t you? In the 1980s, ?Real Men Don?t Eat Quiche? was a satirical book about masculinity and what makes a real man easily identifiable was that he didn?t eat girly foods like quiche. Manly men ate red meat. Most of those manly beef-eaters are now probably dead, but that is another story. ?Real men don?t eat quiche? was a cultural truism at the time and it was easy to identify the wimpy, effeminate, maybe-gay, men like actor Alan Alda and talk show host Phil Donahue, and any man who was sensitive and kind. They were the men who ate quiche. In the 2000s they were metrosexuals. Who knows where they are hiding today.

Enduring Ethnographic Relationships: A Section News Feature from AN

Today we feature an extended version of a December Anthropology News section column, submitted to the Society for East Asian Anthropology by Gene Cooper, professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California. Are you interested in contributing a future Section News column? See the online contact list to get in touch with your AAA section?s editor. Do you have questions or comments about today?s online feature? Contact Gene Cooper at eugeneco [at] usc.edu.

The Future/s of Anthropology: December AN Commentaries Online

December Anthropology News In Focus commentaries on ?The Future/s of Anthropology? are now available on our Current Featured News page, free to the public through December 31. Full December issue content will also be available online soon via AnthroSource.

Is the Internet increasing or reducing global cultural diversity?

Some 10 years ago I was kindly invited by Sim Kwan Yang to give a public talk in Kuala Lumpur about my anthropological research in his native Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. Although I forget the title of the talk, I do remember having to think on my feet about cultural diversity during the lively Q&A session. I don?t mean cultural diversity in its current normative acceptation (at least in Britain?s left-liberal bastions: BBC, Guardian, schools, universities, etc.) as a good thing we should all treasure and defend, but rather as a complex, ill-defined problem demanding historical and anthropological investigation. I can?t go into any depths here, but a big part of the problem is, of course, that social and cultural theorists are far from agreed on what, if anything, is meant by ?culture?. Indeed, many theorists have suggested that we would be better off without this impossible-to-define term. (Yes, as a left-liberal, bicultural Brit-ish citizen I, too, treasure and defend cultural diversity, but that still doesn?t solve this elusive problem, it only makes it harder to study objectively)………..

2012: The Dangers of ?Mayan Quiche?

The greatest threat to the future of humankind has been revealed. It is quiche. Again. You remember  the social threats of quiche, don?t you? In the 1980s, ?Real Men Don?t Eat Quiche? was a satirical book about masculinity and what makes a real man easily identifiable was that he didn?t eat girly foods like quiche. Manly men ate red meat. Most of those manly beef-eaters are now probably dead, but that is another story. ?Real men don?t eat quiche? was a cultural truism at the time and it was easy to identify the wimpy, effeminate, maybe-gay men like actor Alan Alda and talk show host Phil Donahue, and any man who was sensitive and kind. They were the men who ate quiche. In the 2000s they were metrosexuals. Who knows where they are hiding today.

Announcing the new SLA Website!

I?m very happy to announce today the new website for the Society for Linguistic Anthropology (SLA)!

Below the jump is the e-mail I sent out to the SLA announcing the new site.

Some of you may know that last year we established a new spot on the executive committee of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology: that of ?digital content editor.?