AAA meeting round-up: What did all those anthropologists talk about?
Three weeks ago, anthropologists from all over the world met in Philadelphia at the annual meerting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). What did all those anthropologists talk about during the largest anthropology meeting in the world?
This is no easy thing to find out. I haven?t found many newspaper articles about the conference. Conferences aren?t media-friendly. For the first time, the AAA encouraged to blog and tweet about the conference. But you won?t find many references to the conference on leading anthropology blogs. Savage Minds for example has only one (semi-ironocal) post: ?Overheard at the AAA?.
Media anthropology e-seminar: Reimaging Lebanese resistance
The next EASA Media Anthropology Network e-seminar will run on the Network?s mailing list from 16 February to 2 March 2010. Mark Westmoreland (American University in Cairo) will present the working paper ?Akram?s Reproduction Machine: Reimagining Lebanese Resistance.? The discussant will be Kirsten Scheid (American University of Beirut). To take part in this free seminar please drop me a line and I will add you to our mailing list. These seminars are open to anyone with a genuine interest in the anthropology of media. See PDF transcripts of past sessions here.
Abstract
AAA Issues Report on Human Terrain Teams
The American Anthropological Association has issued a report on the Human Terrain Team experiment that the military has undertaken. The report is nuanced and thoughtful, and I recommend that interested people have a look here. AAA Report on Human Terrain Teams
Hollywood’s Human Terrain Avatars
CounterPunch
For most anthropologists these HTT programs are an outrageous abuse of anthropology, and earlier this month a lengthy report by a commission of the American
Human Terrain System Suffers Another Casualty
On 15 December 2009, John Stanton reported the following:
?the US Army HTS had suffered a fourth non-fatal casualty. Sgt. Wesley Cureton was wounded and has lost the use of one eye and has suffered from other head trauma. He is currently at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. HTS management apparently felt no need to report the incident publically. When contacted, Robert Mueller, HTS spokesperson, indicated that he had no information on the matter and that ?you should go through the hospital? to find out Sgt. Cureton?s status.?
Profiles in Practice Podcast: Anthropology in the US Forest Service
Profiles in Practice Podcast #2
(click to listen)
This week Dr. Lee Cerveny discusses her work as a research social scientist at the U.S. Forest Service. As a graduate student, Lee spent six months studying tourism and rural communities in Southeast Alaska for the Forest Service. She continued her work for the agency while finishing her doctorate and was given a permanent position upon completing her dissertation. Listen to her interview with Ruth Sando as she discusses her work, the skills and methodologies that have proven most useful to her, and possible career opportunities for anthropologists.
Lakoff and Collier’s Biosecurity Interventions
Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question
Edited by Andrew Lakoff and Stephen J. Collier
Columbia University Press, 2008
312 pages
US$ 27.50 (Hardcover)
Reviewed by Alexandria Reid, Wayne State University
The field of biosecurity remains mired in uncertainty and confusion. There is little agreement among experts as to what constitutes a biosecurity threat, what it means to secure health, and who is responsible for doing so. The essays in Biosecurity Interventions offer a map to this confusion, providing not definite conclusions, but rather, ?starting points for inquiry,? which can be used to make sense of a still-developing field (280).
New major study on African ancestry
From the press release, Genetic study clarifies African and African-American ancestry:
Exploring the honor culture of social media
How can businesses profit from social media? How does social media challenge what is regarded as ?value? in the business world? Anthropologist Lene Pettersen discusses these and other questions in her paper ?The impact of social media for business?.
Lene Pettersen, one of the few web2.0-anthropologists in Scandinavia, sent me this article that she previously has published on Slideshare
Book review: Photography, Anthropology and History (Part I)
When filming people became possible, anthropologists began to drift away from it. Though better off than at the beginning of the 20th century, the visual anthropology today is still perceived as a marginal discipline, Tessa Valo writes in the first part of her review of Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame.
Happy Christmas: the anthropology of ritual
Times Online (blog)
So, we asked ourselves, if we were doing an anthropological analysis, what would we point to? The tree, for a start — which over period of a few days we
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