National Anthropology Day is
on. The response on social media has been overwhelming. After a massive airdrop by the US of copies of
The Nuer over Eastern Ukraine, guns have been silenced — although how long can it be before Putin begins distributing copies of
Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka to Russian-speaking dissidents? At any rate, since I know many of you are in the middle of preparing for tonight’s festivities, I thought I’d include some helpful anthropological chocolate minty goaty electrical Chinese New Year related recipes.
Anthropology is so important, all children should learn it
The Ecologist
Anthropology, the study of humankind, should be the first of all the sciences our children encounter, writes Marc Brightman, with its singular capacity to inspire the imagination, broaden the mind and open the heart. Moves to downgrade it in the
.Cuba to Host International Convention of Anthropology
Prensa Latina
The Convention includes the Twelfth Symposium of Physical
Anthropology Luis Montane, the Eighth Congress Primates as National Heritage, the Fifth Colloquium Primates through the Caribbean and the Fifth Symposium of
Anthropology Manuel Rivero de la .
The “visual anthropology” of Bayeté Ross Smith takes aim at hearts and minds
Orlando Weekly
Smith, a self-described “visual
anthropologist,” condenses three of his
anthropological projects into a single visual experience dominated by Taking AIM – a series of life-sized black-and-white portraits of African-American and Latino individuals
.Does anthropology have a long tail? Maybe it does, but the head really is superior. Isn’t that the idea behind science anyways? The best ideas are the vetted ideas and
the rejected ideas are put to rest for a reason. Or maybe its not there at all. But then again…
A revised version of this post will appear in Pink, S., H. Horst, J. Postill, L. Hjorth, T. Lewis and J. Tacchi. 2015, Forthcoming. Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices. London: Sage.IN 2003 AND 2004 I conducted anthropological fieldwork in the Kuala Lumpur suburb of Subang Jaya, Malaysia (Postill 2011). I was part of an international team of social anthropologists from the universities of Bremen, Manchester and Amsterdam studying e-governance initiatives in multi-ethnic areas of six different countries. The aim of this comparative project was to determine whether the internet was making any significant difference to local governance policies and practices in those localities. In my particular case, events on the ground led me to an unplanned focus on internet activism around local issues, and its implications for relationships between the municipal authorities and local residents (Postill 2012a).
“Gay” Catholics and an Adequate Anthropology
Catholic World Report
It is just here—at the level of what John Paul II calls an “adequateanthropology”—that Tushnet’s work falls short and undermines her otherwise laudable project. Tushnet’s attempts to depict an understanding of human sexuality that is essentially .
Data mining Wikipedia people reveals some surprising differences in the way eastern and western cultures identify important figures in history, say computational anthropologists.
AAA Executive Director, Ed Liebow, recently posted
an Anthropology Newseditorial on the controversy which flaired up after they posted Peter Wood’s
Anthropology News piece “
Ferguson and the Decline in Anthropology.” In his editorial Liebow asks why the discussion about this piece has occured on Social Media and Blogs, not in the comments on
Anthropology News itself:
ARM-IBM and the anthropology of DIY IoT
Techworld.com (blog)
… in the various sub-groups would feel the distinctions very keenly. There is clearly room for more than one IoT starter community, and more than one kind of starter kit. In the meantime, if someone is looking for a good subject for anAnthropology …
As an anthropologist who also teaches academic writing, I was excited to read
Annie Claus’s essay, “How a professional writer improved my academic writing”at Savage Minds. Claus reflects on a writing course she took with a professor who had been a member of the
New York Times editorial board, and how the course helped her improve her writing. She includes several “writing tips from a (real) pro” based on the experience.
Irrespective of one’s religious beliefs, a genome from the mid-1st century AD would be interesting. I am personally in favor of the scientific study of saints’ relics.
See also the best cultural anthropology dissertations of 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013.As in previous years, I did a key word search in Dissertation Abstracts International to find dissertations defended in 2014 that address topics related to the anthropologyworks mission. I continue to regret that this source provides information almost exclusively on U.S. dissertations, in other words, it is not “international.”
Hamline forensic anthropologist helps police identify old bones
Minneapolis Star Tribune
The bones that end up with forensic
anthropologist Sue Myster come from the strangest places: construction projects, disturbed grave sites, long-hidden crime scenes. From medical samples carelessly thrown out in the woods. “It’s amazing what bones can
…[Savage Minds is pleased to run this essay by guest author Michael Lambek as part of our Writer’s Workshop series. Michael is Professor of Anthropology and Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto Scarborough. His recent publications include “The Interpretation of Lives or Life as Interpretation: Cohabiting with Spirits in the Malagasy World” (American Ethnologist, 2014 41(3): 491-503) and A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion (edited with Janice Boddy, Wiley-Blackwell), out in paper in fall 2015. The Ethical Condition: Essays on Action, Person, and Value (University of Chicago Press) will also appear in the fall. For the University of Toronto Press, he edits the Anthropological Horizons series in ethnography.]Instructors on the frontlines report that undergraduate grades are falling into a bimodal distribution rather than the comfortable old bell curve. The majority do poorly, it is said, because they do not know how to write. I suggest the source of the problem lies one step behind writing, in reading.