Free e-seminar on Friedrich Kittler, 28 Feb-13 March 2012

from media/anthropology by John Postill
The EASA Media Anthropology Network is well known for its electronic seminars which run on our mailing list for a period of two weeks. These are moderated sessions that unfold around a working paper presented by a Network participant or guest.

How to Get a Job as an Anthropologist

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by Adam Fish
Stop being an anthropologist.
Some of my mentors, none of which are in anthropology departments, prefer to say ?trained as an anthropologist, so and so, investigates?? as opposed to ?so and so is an anthropologist.? If you are on the job market this may be hard to do as you are likely to have just become a PhD wielding anthropologist for the first time in your life and quite proud of the moniker and achievement but the shift in self-definition is important for you and your future academic home, I would argue.

On Forming a Digital Anthropology Group

from Neuroanthropology by daniel.lende
The Back-In Lede
Over at Savage Minds, Matt Thompson posted Alright, how about a Digital Anthropology Interest Group? earlier this week. The comments are up to twenty-eight, and I want to discuss here Matt?s outline for an interest group within the American Anthropological Association institutional framework and the many suggestions and ideasthat people provided.

Special Issue of Anthropological Theory on Neuroanthropology

Cultural Cluelessness Threatens U.S. Commando Strategy

from Wired Top Stories by David Axe
In one sense, the U.S.-led coalition has itself to blame for the riots and killings that have raged across Afghanistan in the wake of last week’s accidental burning of the Koran by American forces. Too many U.S. troops habitually disrespect their Afghan trainees, according to some of the elite forces who head up those training sessions. And those small, tactical acts of cultural stupidity can lead to a strategic moment, like the one we’re having now.

Anthropological perspective sheds new light on Occupy Wall Street

The Scribe

Anthropology Professor Linda Watts and a team of six of her students began a project inAnthropology 3500, Ethnographic Methods and Theory, that examines unemployment through many different lenses. The project has now yielded a research article

Is there support for an OA interest group among AAA members?

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by Matt Thompson
Shortly after Bill Davis?s letter to the White House provoked debate here at Savage Minds and other anthropology blogs I joined a conversation in the comments section of one post about what actions advocates of OA ought to take. In this post I?d like to continue that discussion: what should we do next? I will suggest that one option is the formation of an ?interest group? and I?d like some feedback from readers on the topic.

Turkish population structure (Hodoğlugil and Mahley, 2012)

from Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog by Dienekes
These results appear to be consistent with my own estimate of 1/7 Central Asian ancestry for Anatolian Turks. In a more recent analysis based on haplotype sharing, I have discovered that there is some sub-structure within the Turkish population, with the emergence of three tendencies: a central group of Anatolian Turks, a group of Turks with partial origin from the Balkans, and a group of Turks from northeastern Anatolia. As more project participants join the Dodecad Project, we will learn much more on the structure of the Turkish population and its relationships with its geographical neighbors and linguistic relatives.

Archaeology & place

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by Ryan
It?s 8 am, and already bright.  I?m out for an early morning walk because it?s a good way to see what ?s going on around this community?to see what people are up to, and also just to go check out the surrounding landscape.  I like to do this a few times a week?it?s good for getting the ideas rolling.  I walk up a small ridge along the coast.  I weave my way through the thorny, chaotic bushes that try to impose themselves on the trail.  Why is everything in the desert sharp?  As I walk up to the crest of the ridge, I get a view of a large, blue-green bay curving in front of me.  Down below the dark forms of the rocky reef peek through the shimmering water.  Other obscure forms dart around below the water?s surface: sharks.  I walk over to the edge of the ridge, and notice darker soil eroding out of the bank.  Amidst this soil: a slew of broken rocks and shells.  Another archaeological site, another testament to the depth of human occupation in this place.  The whole coast has similar remnants of the hunter-gatherer populations that lived here thousands of years before the words ?international five start hotel? were ever muttered on the Baja California Peninsula.

Voyaging for Anti-Colonial Recovery

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by Rex
The piece for discussion this week (actually, it should have been last week, but I got caught behind a couple of different eight balls) is Vincente Diaz?s ?Voyaging for Anti-Colonial Recovery?. It?s a short piece with a few flaws ? it lacks the informality and wit of Diaz?s other work, and feels at times one revision away from being really polished. But overall it is accessible, short, and a great window into a wider scholarly project that is happening in a lot of places, and in many ways similar to HAU?s. So perhaps a bit of background is in order.

Facial attractiveness and interracial marriage

from Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog

The Stakes for Anthropology in 2012

from Anthropology Report by Jason Antrosio

Thinking of What is Anthropology as the study of humanity is a good beginning, but anthropology?s documentation of human life is not just a neutral exercise. More than any other academic discipline, anthropology?s documentation of human history and creativity can now tell us about human possibilities at a time when the previously unquestioned is being challenged. Anthropology affirms that unprecedented concentration of wealth and power is not part of ?human nature? but particular to this capitalist moment; that cult-like devotion to ?the market? as the measure of all value corrodes human potential and threatens the planet we share; that humans are capable of cooperation, sharing, and kindness, and of coming together across difference to make the world more beautiful.

Taking Anthropology 1, Jared Diamond

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by jason
In a recent post, Kerim does excellent work tracing the Savage Minds engagement with Jared Diamond, which dates to the establishment of this blog as a scrappy band of Davids taking aim at Goliath.
These days, Diamond gets criticized mostly for not reading or potentially libelous composite misreadings. But I want to dial this back to Diamond?s 1987 article ?Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,? when Diamond obviously takes anthropology from Richard B. Lee?mongongo nuts with no acknowledgment?and also reproduces Lee and Irven DeVore, again with no credit for what almost any professor would call plagiarism.
Did people challenge Diamond for this taking of anthropology in 1987? Could a more forceful response have cautioned Diamond from appropriating anthropology with impunity and ?diluting the brand?? Would Jared Diamond have become? JARED DIAMOND?

Protecting Informants in a Time of Digital Thievery

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by Kerim
The NY Times has an article about how corporate executives and government officials leave their laptops behind when they go to China or Russia, for fear that corporate or government secrets might be compromised by advanced spyware.

Anthropology and Human Nature

from Anthropology Report by Jason Antrosio

As an academic discipline, anthropology was born relatively recently, with a key period of institutionalization in the 1880s-1930s. By that time, debates about human nature already had a deep history, but were moving out of the philosophical and religious arena into an emerging scientific arena and the theory of evolution. Anthropology has been inevitably intertwined with these debates, but was supposed to provide empirical and field-based observations.

Alright, how about a Digital Anthropology Interest Group?

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by Matt Thompson
Following on the heels of Bill Davis? letter to the White House that has been hashed out here and elsewhere it became apparent that many of us are concerned about the future of Open Access principles within the AAA. The suggestion that we organize an OA interest group has been amended to include working towards a broader, ?digital anthropology? interest group. There are a number of advantages to adopting the ?digital? moniker. While OA can still be one of the core issues of the group, it may be politically tactful not to include that in the name of our organization. By making the organization more inclusive we can get more people involved and, if need be, shift focus as issues related to OA develop and the group itself becomes more mature.

Ruth Benedict: Anthropology and the Humanities