Anthropology roundup: Franz Boas and Neuroanthropology and more…

In Memoriam: Michel-Rolph Trouillot

from American Anthropological Association by Joslyn O.

Photo courtesy of University of Chicago
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, 62, world-renowned anthropologist and historian, died July 5, 2012 following long struggles to recuperate from an aneurism suffered in 2002. Born in Haiti on November 26, 1949, Trouillot came to the U.S. in 1969, during the worst years of the Duvalier dictatorship. He received a B.A. in Caribbean History and Culture from CUNY (1978). Trouillot published Ti difé boulé sou Istoua Ayiti in 1977, the first non-fiction book about the Haitian Revolution written in Haitian Kreyòl. In 1978 he entered graduate school to study anthropology at The Johns Hopkins University, advised by Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, contributing to The Program in Atlantic History, Culture and Society.

Going Native

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by deepa
[The post below was contributed by guest blogger Deepa S. Reddy, and is part of a series on the relationship between academic precarity and the production of ethnography, introduced here. Read Deepa?s previous posts:post 1 & post 2.]
In my prior post, I argued that a certain set of practical, professional constraints (read: the increasing impossibility of the lengthy immersion fieldwork model) compel us to sell our services as anthropologists (often in some stereotyped sense) piecemeal ? holding out in the hope that just participating in such research buys positioning that opens out to truly innovative research questions. In this uniquely inter-disciplinary process, anthropology retains?often actively protects?its exclusivity, even as it hands itself over as a tool of commerce or fashion design or whatever. Sans exclusivity, after all, where would those lucrative professional research opportunities be? What value would I have in a market already over-filled with experts?

Dance Lessons: A Comparison of Precarity and Contingency in Contemporary U.S. Choreography and Ethnography

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by deepa
[The post below was contributed by guest blogger Laurel George, and is part of a series on the relationship between academic precarity and the production of ethnography, introduced here. Read Laurel’s prior posts: post 1 & post 2]

Ethnography?s Sense

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by deepa
[The post below was contributed by guest blogger Ali Kenner, and is part of a series on the relationship between academic precarity and the production of ethnography, introduced here. Read Ali’s prior posts: post 1 & post 2]
In this post I?m going to diverge a bit, writing not about my work for Cultural Anthropology, but about that otherproject of mine: an ethnography of breathing, and how the breath registers embodied signs of late capitalism (in the contemporary asthma epidemic and U.S. yoga industry). It?s a project grounded in my own yoga practice, a risky set-up, I think, for someone already working on the margins.

Attention Deficit Ethnography

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by deepa
[The post below was contributed by guest blogger Lane DeNicola, and is part of a series on the relationship between academic precarity and the production of ethnography, introduced here. Read Lane?s previous posts:post 1 — post 2 — post 3]

Workplace Ethnography 101?Interrogating the Unpaid Internship

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by deepa
[The post below was contributed by guest blogger Laurel George, and is part of a series on the relationship between academic precarity and the production of ethnography, introduced here. Read Laurel’s prior posts: post 1 — post 2 — post3]

Franz Boas and Neuroanthropology

from Neuroanthropology by daniel.lende
On Franz Boas

Franz Boas was the founder of anthropology in the United States. A German immigrant, he came to the Americas as a scientist interested in psychophysics, or sensory perception in relation to the physical world. He was interested in whether individuals living in the far north, surrounded by ice and snow, perceived the world differently ? a sort of ?many words for snow? question. While living among the Inuit on Baffin Island, Boas realized two things: (1) culture works in between human perception and the physical properties of the world, and (2) the history of a place matters in how people act and how they understand the world.

Theorizing the Contemporary ? Finance Special Issue

from Material World by Heather Horst
Cultural Anthropology has just launched a new Theorizing the Contemporary Forum . The forum on ?Finance?, guest edited by Bill Maurer, features eighteen essays on topics such as risk, debt, ethics, infrastructure and more. You can visit the entire forum here, culanth.org/?q=node/561 For an ? Continue reading ?

Anthropology on Power, Inequality, Human Nature

from Anthropology Report by Jason Antrosio
Lots of anthropology blog activity over the weekend?I?m saving some material for a general update. This update concentrates on recent reflections about how anthropology studies power, inequality, and human nature. Daniel Lende writes an intriguing analysis of the new Prisoner?s Dilemma paper, and neuroanthropology gets a plug inAnthropology News; Agustín Fuentes on being moral humans; Jeremy Trombley on ?Power and Revolution?; some reflections on inequality and culture by Bo and Ben Winegrad; news on major resource projects in the north from Siomonn Pulla; on Savage Minds, Matt Thompson opens a provocative thread on power and higher education; and two calls for papers, one specifically on inequality from the Society for Economic Anthropology and the other on ?Evolving Humanity, Emerging Worlds.?

?Man-sheep-dog?: inter-species social skills

from Neuroanthropology by gregdowney
Paul Keil and Greg Downey
Paul, the lead author, interviewed sheepdog trialer Damian Wilson about his interactions with his dog, a border collie named Yandarra Whiskey. Damian and Whiskey gave Paul a demonstration of the techniques used in sheepdog competitions as they together tried to move a mob of three sheep. In a competition in New South Wales, a trainer and dog have to move three sheep who have never been herded through a difficult obstacle course, and the trainer loses points if he (or, less frequently, she) breaks from a slow, measured pace walking the course. The rules mean that the dog itself must be trained until it anticipates the sheep?s reactions, and understands, on some level, what dog and trainer, together, are trying to accomplish. Although the trialer may give commands, the dog, too, is a kind of expert.

Mentoring in Anthropology: Thoughts on Praxis, Anthropology, and the Teaching/Learning Process

from Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology ? A Group Blog by maryalice
My last post considered some questions about mentoring in anthropology and whether we as anthropologists have anything specific, particular, or unique to add to a discussion that is happening in many places, including the scholarship of teaching and learning, undergraduate and graduate research, schools of education, and specifically in anthropology. The comments on the post provoked a lot more thinking about mentoring on my part, so here I want to pull out some of the comments and questions to elaborate further. I?ll post on one or two questions at a time this week.

Confessions of a Teenage Anthropologist

from American Anthropological Association by Joslyn O.
Teen Ink is a publication by the non-profit Young Authors Foundation, Inc. that provides a space for teens aged 13-19 a place to share their writing and works of art. One of the teen authors, under the pen name Victoriagrace, is a budding anthropologist. Victoriagrace has started a series entitled Confessions of a Teen Anthropologist. One day she hopes to become a university professor or a museum curator, until then she?s working on building her portfolio by sharing anthropology with her peers. Here is an excerpt of her first entry:

BEAN ? Bridging the European and Anatolian Neolithic

from Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog by Dienekes
The BEAN project has been on my radar for a while now, and it’s great that it seems to be alive and well. Hopefully it won’t be too long until it starts producing results.

Diet Of Early Human Relative Australopithecus Shows Surprises, Says Texas …
MarketWatch (press release)
Darryl de Ruiter, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, says the new findings are in contrast to previously documented diets of other hominin species and suggests that Australopithecus sediba had a different living environment than

Prehumans ate bark, says study
The Bunsen Burner
An international team of researchers has discovered what prehumans ate, according to a press release from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Researchers say that direct evidence of our earliest ancestors’ meals has been unearthed

Understanding modern systemic diseases through a study of anthropology
Dentistry IQ
An interview with Kevin Boyd, DDS, MS, sheds light on a new groundbreaking medical theory called Darwinian Dentistry. By studying the prehistoric fossil remains of our human ancestors, Dr. Boyd has developed an innovative hypothesis about the past and

Anthropology ? Changing Science Paradigms

from Anthropology Report by Jason Antrosio
I highlight below two pieces, an article by Jonathan Marks, The biological myth of human evolution and a blog-post by Anne Buchanan, Paradigms are like glue. Both are powerful statements of how anthropology can and should be changing the paradigms of science.