Recent anthro work on Love….

The latest on love

What do cultural anthropologists know about love? To mark Valentine?s Day, a widely celebrated occasion in the United States, I did some research. Using the Anthropology Plus database available through my university library, and with love as my only search term, I came up with the following list of articles published by cultural anthropologists from 2007 to the present. This list offers a quick glimpse into the cultural anthropology of love.

Cultural anthropology up

The number of research proposals submitted by cultural anthropologists to the U.S. National Science Foundation has risen dramatically in the past few years according to Deborah Winslow in American Anthropological Association?s Anthropology News (Winslow is the cultural anthropology program officer at the NSF).

Encouraged by the rising number of applications, Winslow comments, ?I believe that anthropologists are needed to solve the world?s most urgent problems, but we must do basic, gritty and time-consuming research to get the recognition that will accord us voice.?

David Price on HTS (Counterpunch)

David Price has a new article over at Counterpunch that discusses the experiences of John Allison, a cultural anthropologist/archaeologist who was recruited into the Human Terrain Systems project. An excerpt:

New media, the academic field and university reform

The February 2010 (Vol 18, No. 1) special issue of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) journal, Social Anthropology, is devoted to the ?anthropologies of university reform?. A rare case of a tightly integrated journal issue that approaches the same theme through three different ? and complementary ? genres: a collection of articles, a debate section, and a review article.

Why I Like Anthropologists Better than International Studies Types: AAA vs. ISA vs. ASA

Mark Dawson commented on his Facebook page about attending the International Studies Association meetings in New Orleans this year, and promises to write something for this blog later this week.  This brought back memories to me.  I attended the ISA meetings about ten years ago in the hope that they would be interested in my research about the nature of NGOs and refugee assistance in Africa.  I was interested in what were the best ways to deliver refugee aid in a fashion which was efficient, effective, and culturally appropriate.  Sociology, which is where my Ph.D. is from, was nominally my platform; however, sociology has never done particularly with international in general, and Africa in particular.  As a result I was open to other approaches at the time, which is why I went to the ISA meetings first in Washington, D.C. (1999), and later in New Orleans (2002).

Ethnography briefing: the Andaman Islanders

The Andaman Islands are a string of islands in the Bay of Bengal that belong to India. For unknown numbers of centuries, many of the islands were inhabited by people who fished, gathered and hunted for their livelihood. During the 18th century, when European countries were expanding trade routes to east Asia, the Andaman Islands were of major strategic importance as a stopping place.

Female genital cutting update

A report by Charlotte Feldman-Jacobs and Donna Clifton of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, DC, provides updated information about the prevalence of female genital cutting (FGC):

Transhumanists, Technolibertarians, and Technoprogressives

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by Adam Fish