What Happened at #AAA2015: The Good, The Bad, and the Bibs Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology Last week, Denver welcomed about five thousand anthropologists to its Gilded Age (and Gilded Age revival) downtown for the massive anthropological blowout that was the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. So what were the main trends of … Read more
Terror in France and ISIS’ Revolution: Anthropologists try to see the whole picture antropologi.info – anthropology in the news blog (draft, post in progress) More surveillance, more bombs, more border controls, less democracy, less freedom: Europe is reacting hysterically after the deadly terror attacks in Paris one week ago. How to make sense of what is … Read more
BDS, the AAA, and Academic Imperialism OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY by Maximilian Forte We Disagree to Agree Support for a particular cause can come from numerous sources and points of view, each representing different interests. Similarly, people can arrive at the site of a demonstration, united in protest against an injustice, having arrived there from many different routes … Read more
Official #AAA2015 #tweetup planning thread Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology Ok trying to plan the tweetup for the AAAs on twitter is getting ridiculous because by the time you mention everyone who is involved in planning it there is no room for an actual message. So here is a thread where we can plan the … Read more
Gorgeous book of paper airplanes collected by anthropologist Harry Smith Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow Myths and Facts About the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog by Jessica Winegar Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions is pleased to extend its original series on this blog … Read more
Anthropology as Theoretical Storytelling Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog by Carole McGranahan [This essay is part of the Fall 2015 Savage Minds Writers’ Workshop series.] Anthropologists are storytellers. We tell stories: other’s stories, our own stories, stories about other’s stories. But when I think about anthropology and storytelling, I think … Read more
Vale Anthony Wallace and Raymond Smith Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog I couldn’t let this week slip by without mentioning the passing of two great anthropologist: Raymond T. Smith and Anthony F.C. Wallace. Raymond T. Smith was a social anthropologist who earned his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1954 at Cambridge, … Read more
Final Report: Task Force on AAA Engagement on Israel-Palestine American Anthropological Association by Anne Kelsey Read the full report. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Recent years have seen increasing pressure in the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and many other professional academic associations to discuss alleged Israeli violations of academic freedom and human rights, and to move toward sanctioning Israel. … Read more
Encrypting Ethnography: Digital Security for Researchers Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology (This invited post comes to us from Jonatan Kurzwelly. Jonatan is a a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of St. Andrews. You can email him atkurzwelly@mailbox.org . his PGP fingerprint is: 1B4B 89B4 DD31 B05E 949A E181 B51C CA99 2FD6 6382 -Rex) Imagine … Read more
Jack Goody (1919-2015): an oral history Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog [The following is an invited post by Keith Hart, Centennial Professor of Economic Anthropology in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and International Director of the Human Economy Program in the Centre for the … Read more
Partha Chatterjee: Why I Support the Boycott of Israeli Institutions Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog by Carole McGranahan [Savage Minds is honored to publish this essay by Partha Chatterjee, Professor of Anthropology and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University, and of the Centre for the Studies … Read more
‘Biggest’ Stonehenge site uncovered BBC News | Europe | World Edition Huge stones found buried near Stonehenge were part of a ritual site built on an “extraordinary scale” and unique in the world, researchers say. Sara Little Turnbull, Product Designer Inspired by Anthropologyand Nature … New York Times Operating at a nexus of design, culture and … Read more
“Anthropology” in the Snowden Surveillance Archive Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog by Adam Fish A search for “anthropology” in the Snowden Surveillance Archive results in two hits. Both documents were created and presented by the UK GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) which sees anthropology as a method with … Read more
Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss – melancholyanthropology The Guardian (blog) Perhaps you are a lover of travellers’ tales. If the voice of this French anthropologist conveys to you nothing more than academic curmudgeonliness, let’s leave it there. But isn’t it a kind of fastidiousness that seems to belong to a vanished . Malinowski’s Legacy: One … Read more
Coffee rituals and resistance to domination Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog by Matt Thompson Remember resistance to domination? This was a very popular theme in cultural studies in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Eventually it reached a saturation point where, like an overplayed hit on Top 40 radio, it … Read more