“Pine Cone Anthropology in Afghanistan

The Loaded Goat: Revisiting Pine Cone Anthropology in Afghanistan

The diary of Ted the Tongue reveals more about the poverty of the academic thinking and conduct that provisions the ?Comparative Cultural Competence? (or is it ?Cross-Cultural Competence??) component of the U.S. Army?s Human Terrain System (HTS) than the colorful background and confused imaginings of a young American adventurer in the guise of anthropologist and ethnographer. Ted Callahan?s pretentious and austere anthropological competence is probably standard equipment in the design and operations of HTS teams in Afghanistan. Thus, aside from the moral and ethical implications of ?Enlisting Anthropology in the War,? this quality and form of anthropological participation in the so called ?war? has resulted in ?blind leading the blind,? which is as lethal and destructive as the bullets and bombs hurled at the defenseless people of Afghanistan by the dazed and dark-minded American military machine.

Glory Days ? Anthropologists as Journalists

Brian McKenna, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan ? Dearborn, has a great piece in the August 2010 newsletter of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Starting on p. 11 (the newsletter is a pdf), McKenna has a piece entitled ?Doing Anthropology as an Environmental Journalist.?

Janelle Taylor on teaching “Perspectives in Medical Anthropology”

This post was contributed by Janelle Taylor (University of Washington).

ANTH 475 Syllabus 2009

The “illegal” anthropologist: Shahram Khosravi’s Auto-Ethnography of Borders

Globalisation means for most people on this planet higher fences and less movement across borders. The new book by anthropologist Shahram Khosravi is an auto-ethnography of illegalised border crossing.

The Beatles and Anthropology

Thanks to one of our/my readers with the note “best example about assumptions in anthropology”. I quite agree. Entitled Beatles 3000. Have a bit of a giggle.

Gift economies suck (except ours)

First off: wow. A few angst-filled posts were all it took for this blog to come back to life with a series of great new posts (by great new members of the blog!) and rich thoughtful comments. Rumours of our death were greatly exaggerated. Congratulations and thanks everyone ? be sure to pace yourselves as I hope this will turn into a beautiful glowing marathon of content rather than a brief multicoloured spasm of posts that ends suddenly full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. So: thanks!

What lurks at the margin for indigenous peoples

Guest post by Morgan Keay

This post is an analytical literature review, with bibliography, of recent sources that use anthropological methods to explore threats to indigenous peoples, the implications of the threats/factors, and the responses of indigenous groups. It was originally prepared for a graduate seminar at George Washington University on ?Culture, Risk and Security? in spring 2009.

Human Terrain System in the Media

First, and in case you missed them, a series of YouTube videos produced by the U.S. military about the Human Terrain System: