Learning to Trust Machines That Learn SAPIENS by Matthew Gwynfryn Thomas and Djuke Veldhuis Imagine lying on a hospital bed. Doctors with grave expressions hover. One leans down to tell you that you are terribly sick and says they recommend a risky procedure as your best hope. You ask them to explain what’s going on. They cannot. … Read more
Three weeks have already passed. But there are many weeks to go and if any one is interested in joining reading discussions online (we are on Week 4), here is the code to join MED 521 course: km26m5 at classroom.google.com MED 521 – Syllabus for Fall 2017 Digital Anthropology for Media Studies Mondays 19:00-22:00- santral E2-102 … Read more
Iceland’s Forgotten Fisherwomen SAPIENS by Roberta Kwok Fisherwomen have played a significant role in Iceland’s history, and yet their contribution has been, for the most part, overlooked. Michelle Jones/SAPIENS Explaining Ethnography in the Field: A Conversation between Pasang Yangjee Sherpa and Carole McGranahan Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog by Carole McGranahan What is ethnography? … Read more
Great anthropologists who fought fascism Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology Some of you who — unlike me — have not had family members murdered by nazis or had every synagogue in their home town firebombed in the same night may now be learning about antifa for the first time. But although it’s making waves in the media now, … Read more
Perspectives: An Open Access Intro Anthro Textbook Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology (This guest post by Nina Brown, Thomas McIlwraith, and Laura Tubelle de González announces the launch of what I believe is the first open access textbook for an introduction to cultural anthropology course. I’ve blogged about this textbook before so I’m very excited that it is now … Read more
Hacker and Drone Training as Ethnographic Fieldwork Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog by Adam Fish Recently, I enrolled in two multi-day training workshops in the United Kingdom with the pretense of gathering ethnographic data about emergent cultures of practice surrounding new technologies. The first was an ethical hacking workshop in Manchester–where … Read more
Oldest Known Homo Sapiens Fossils Found SAPIENS by Nicola Jones At the site of an old Moroccan mine, paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin points to one of the oldest Homo sapiens skulls yet found. Philipp Gunz/MPI EVA Leipzig The oldest bones yet of our species have been found, surprisingly, in an old Moroccan mine. At about 300,000 years … Read more
Anthropology in an Age of ‘Dangerous Nonsense’ (Part 1) Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology In the waning moments of 2016, one man, armed with an AR-15 and “information” about a conspiracy related to Hilary Clinton, walked into a DC pizza parlor hell bent on finding truth. After a quick look around and a shot … Read more
Argonauts of the Internet: Anthropology and Community Management – What’s anthropology good for? A lot, actually. blog.reddit — what’s new on reddit by Staff Christine Moellenberndt Anthropologist / Community Manager This blog post was adapted from “The Digital and the Applied: Digital Anthropology and Business,” a paper presented at the 2017 Southwestern Anthropological Association Conference. As … Read more
A necessary complication: towards a richer understanding of affordances media/anthropology by John Postill A comment on Elisabetta Costa “Social Media as Practices: an Ethnographic Critique of ‘Affordances’ and ‘Context Collapse’.” EASA Media Anthropology Network’s 60th e-Seminar, 9-23 May 2017 by Christian Pentzold Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research University of Bremen In order to capture … Read more
George Soros: Public Enemy and Human Sacrifice Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog by Andria Timmer George Soros is one busy man, particularly for an octogenarian. If the rumors are to be believed, he is single-handedly funding agitators in the United States and Hungary (and likely other Central and Eastern European … Read more
The Ethical Battle Over Ancient DNA SAPIENS by Michael Balter A new controversy has arisen over recent scientific analyses conducted on ancient Native American remains that were uncovered in the 1890s at Pueblo Bonito, an archaeological site located in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Andrew Kearns/Flickr In February, scientists published a critically important contribution to our understanding … Read more
Ethnography in a time of upheaval – Egypt before and after the ‘Arab spring’ open Democracy News Analysis – by Leila Zaki Chakravarti and Mona Abaza Even within the narrower parameters of public spaces, debates which might lead to issues around accountability and transparency are not hugely popular in the public eye. Snapshots of daily life: … Read more
What Did the Voice of Neanderthals, Our Distant Cousins, Sound Like?: Scientists Demonstrate Their “High Pitch” Theory Open Culture by Dan Colman Scholars have made informed, educated guesses at what Shakespeare sounded like in the original pronunciation. The same applies to what Old Norse sounded like from the 9th through the 13th centuries. And even to Beowulf read in … Read more
W.E.B. Du Bois’ hand-drawn infographics from “The Exhibit of American Negroes” kottke.org by Jason Kottke W.E.B. Du Bois was an American author, sociologist, historian, and activist. Apparently Du Bois was also a designer and design director of some talent as these hand-drawn infographics show. White nationalists seem to have manipulated Google search results for ‘Boasian … Read more