Now I see why my abstract to AN’s special issue was rejected. All giants of anthropology and journalism did chip in the special issue and i am not a giant for sure:)
Anthropology and Journalism: April AN Now Online
April Anthropology News In Focus commentaries on anthropology and journalism are now posted on our Current Featured News page, free to the public throughout the month. Authors include S Elizabeth Bird, Dominic Boyer, Maria D Vesperi, Mark Allen Peterson, Shannon May, Barbara J King and Gary Feinman. Full issue content is available via AnthroSource, including additional thematic articles from other sections by contributors such as Mark Pedelty and Kathryn Graber.
Why anthropologists should study news media
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Bad News. Photo: Stitch, flickr |
The time is right for more anthropologists to engage with news media – with their creation, reception and content, writes S Elizabeth Bird in the recent issue of Anthropology News that was published today.
Two books on indigenous methods
I am a late adopter of Twitter (r3×0r ? feel free to follow me), and one of the nice things about being late to the party is that all of your old friends have already arrived and had a few drinks by the time you find a place to park. I?ve been trading tweets lately with Tad McIlwraith about some books on methods ? particularly books on anthropological-y methods by indigenous scholars and activists who have better things to do than be anthropologists.
Archaeology magazine feature on Eleutherna
Dynasty of Priestesses is a nice Archaeology feature on a set of “Dark” age inhumations of females at the site of Eleutherna in Crete. There is plenty of audiovisual material on the site, so go ahead and visit it. An excerpt:
Anthro Classics Online: The Impact of Money
It?s been a while since I?ve updated my series of posts about classic anthropology texts which can be downloaded for free online. I started the series with a post about a text by Laura Bohannan, now I turn to the husband, Paul, whose classic ?The Impact of Money on an African Subsistance Economy? can be found here [PDF].
This is an easy post to write, as Keith Hart has an article on the anthropology of money which nicely summarizes the article and provides some trenchant critique. I?ve pasted the relevant section after the jump.
Anthropology as a Repository of the Exotic? Or: Anthropology and the PR Problem
A couple of things have me thinking (again) about the nature of anthropology–as if I ever stop wondering about that.
The first was this post over at the Open Anthropology Cooperative, which finally generated an interesting discussion–thanks mostly to David Picard. As I already noted in another post a while back, I was a little surprised that the initial request by Mr McDermott was not received more critically. His request was, after all, basically flying in the face of contemporary anthropology, with the stated intent of finding some good “remote” and “colorful” festivals and people to photograph for the pages of National Geographic. Overall, I took issue less with the request itself than with the fact that the photographer had certain understandings about anthropology that made it seem reasonable to make such a request.
Anthropology of Ad Agency Summed Up in 2 Minutes Flat
AdAge.com
… scenario in about 90000 fewer words than some people we know, but also because it deftly and amusingly documents the anthropology of agency life.
On the Use of Natural Experiments in Anthropology
Controlled and replicated laboratory experiment, in which an experimenter directly manipulates variables, is often considered the hallmark of the scientific method. It is virtually the only method employed in laboratory physical sciences and in molecular biology. Without question, this approach is uniquely powerful in establishing chains of cause and effect. But the cruel reality is that manipulative experiments are impossible in many fields widely admitted to be sciences, such as evolutionary biology, paleontology, epidemiology, historical geology, and astronomy. When one is studying bird communities, dinosaurs, smallpox epidemics, glaciers, or other planets, manipulative experiments are not possible. One therefore has to devise other methods of “doing science”. A technique that frequently proves fruitful in these disciplines is the so-called natural experiment. A natural experiment is a naturally occurring instance of an observable phenomenon which approximates or duplicates the properties of a controlled experiment. In contrast to laboratory experiments, these events are not created or directly controlled by scientists. However, they can yield data that can be used to make causal inferences.
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