03.08.05: The blog has moved to www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/, and several broken links have been corrected
Here are the most recent posts on the new blog location:
Saturday, September 04, 2004, 13:45
The Okavango Delta Peoples of Botswana and The Maithil Brahmans in India
Two new links, found via Science Blog (Open Directory Project):
The Okavango Delta Peoples of Botswana: Short overview, many links. By John Bock, professor in the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Fullerton: "The Okavango Delta of the Republic of Botswana is a large wetland surrounded by the Kalahari desert. The Okavango is a unique ecosystem and has large populations of African mammals, birds, and other animals. Of less interest have been the 100,000 people who call the Delta home. This site is dedicated to the dissemination of information concerning the Okavango Delta People" >> continue
The Maithil Brahmans in India: an online ethnography by Carolyn Brown Heinz, Department of Anthropology California State University, Chico - including fieldnotes and many pictures. Confusing site navigation. >> continue
Friday, September 03, 2004, 08:22
Multiculturalism or anti-racism?
Alana Lentin, Open Democracy
The multiculturalist model that elevates difference to a social principle is under attack. People committed to creating a world of justice and equal rights should not waste time defending it.
Multiculturalism’s exclusive focus on culture can present an apolitical picture of “minority” experience and agency that evades the daily realities of institutionalised racism. This emphasis on culture lies at the heart of the problem of multiculturalism, and – I would argue – makes it an unworthy prize for progressive voices now seeking to reclaim it. >> continue
Thursday, September 02, 2004, 08:36
A Mexican Adventure: The indigenous Mayan villagers and the local Latinos
The Vanderbilt Hustler
For most American college students, a trip to Mexico means heavy drinking and wild times. But not for senior James Doyle. Doyle spent six weeks in Mexico this summer, and instead of swilling beer, he was doing anthropological research. He focused specifically on the relations between the indigenous Mayan villagers and the local Latinos. >> continue
Wednesday, September 01, 2004, 11:46
Thomas Hylland Eriksen's september newsletter on immigration issues
Thomas Hylland Eriksen's homepage
There are, plainly, no good arguments against allowing increased labour migration into European countries. Their labour is needed in our countries with their ageing populations; they enhance and widen the scope of national identities; their remittances help out at home; and their children have opportunities only dreamt about a generation earlier.
The problem for a country like Norway is, therefore, not how to limit the number of asylum-seekers or labour migrants, nor how to mitigate the conflict between immigrants and the domestic working class. The problem consists in attracting professionals. >> continue
Wednesday, September 01, 2004, 08:35
Northern Norway's first ever witch conference
AP / Yahoo News
Nearly 400 years after the worst of the Norwegian witch trials ripped through the area, approximately 100 people have made their way to the small town of Vardoe, just over 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) from the North Pole, for northern Norway's first ever witch conference.
"When we take the low population of Finnmark (Norway's northernmost county and home to Vardoe) into consideration, the persecution of accused witches is almost the worst in all of Europe," Rune Blix Hagen Hagen, historian at the University of Tromsoe, says. Approximately 20 percent of the 138 people convicted of witchcraft in Finnmark county between 1598 and 1692 were Sami.
While the belief in witchcraft and magic may appear firmly lodged in the past, the willingness to participate in witch hunts has not ebbed with the passing centuries, according to social anthropologist Jan Broegger. >> continue
Wednesday, September 01, 2004, 08:30
American scholars alarmed by controversial education bill
National Catholic Reporter
American scholars are alarmed by a controversial education bill that would increase government monitoring of federally funded programs in international studies at colleges and universities.
Backers of the bill say it will help restore balance to Middle East studies programs, which they say are overly critical of Israel and of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Opponents say the bill could lead to intrusive investigations of faculty and will undermine the credibility of American scholarship.
The proposed board would have the authority “to study, monitor, apprise and evaluate a sample of activities” to ensure that programs represent “diverse perspectives.”
Although the legislation was born out of the polarized debate about Middle East studies, it will apply to a variety of other academic programs related to international studies, including the study and research of modern languages, area studies and anthropology. >> continue
Tuesday, August 31, 2004, 11:15
1500 Delegates expected at World Congress on Human Movements and Immigration
Forum Barcelona 2004
The World Congress on Human Movements and Immigration from September 2 to 5 will bring together some 1,500 delegates from all over the world to assess the effects of migration flows and think of new ways to address these issues in a global and efficient way.
The dialogue, which will begin on Wednesday, is divided into three main topics: transformation (understood as he impact of the knowledge and information society on migration flows); cultural diversity (with specific attention to the new relations established between different communities, identities, territories and cultures); and justice (given the social and economic contrasts and the different levels of access to goods resulting from migration flows). >> continue
Monday, August 30, 2004, 22:06
Papuan anthropologist wins award for study on gender issues
The Jakarta Post
A Papuan anthropologist, Marlina Flassy, has been declared the winner of the Peniti Emas community research award, capping a series of science and technology achievements by people in the remote province.
Marlina's research conducted in 2001, found changes to the value systems of the patriarchal Papuan communities, which had begun to provide women with access to education to improve their prospects for marriage.
"In the past, when a man proposed to a woman, he gave the woman only a package of kain timur (eastern cloth) as a bride price. But now, the higher the educational background the bride has, the higher she will be priced, sometimes amounting up to Rp 50 million (US$5,500)," the lecturer of the state Cendrawasih University in Jayapura said. >> continue
Sunday, August 29, 2004, 14:39
Missionaries focus their efforts on the most remote indigenous groups on earth
RICHARD N. OSTLING, The Associated Press
The Missions Institute of New Tribes Mission specializes in evangelism among the 3,000 indigenous groups in the world’s remotest tracts, places that remain isolated from the outside world and thus untouched by Christianity. Most operations are in Latin America, Southeast Asia and West Africa. New Tribes, based in Sanford, Fla., has assembled one of the largest missionary forces in the world: 3,200 workers in 17 nations, two-thirds of them Americans.
Teams of five or six missionaries leave the modern world and its conveniences behind to spend years living among tribespeople, learning their language and culture in order to translate the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament into tribal languages, most of which have never before been reduced to writing. The workers then teach reading and writing, and establish churches to be run by tribal converts.
Survival International, the London-based tribal rights champion, and many academic anthropologists criticize incursions by missionaries. But Greg Sanford, the sophisticated but plainspoken director, vigorously defends New Tribes practices. He insists that the missionaries help preserve tribal cultures rather than undermining them, and are humanitarians who provide literacy, basic medical treatment and other helpful knowledge. >> continue
Thursday, August 26, 2004, 10:26
Multimedia website on American Indians lives in the 1830s
Christian Science Monitor
In the 1830s, native Americans from the eastern half of the United States were being "relocated" to the West, while those already in the West were having their last experience with living in a land that was actually under their own control. At the same time, George Catlin, an ex-lawyer from Philadelphia decided to "gain fame" by recording Indian lives and cultures before they were permanently altered by European influences.
Campfire Stories with George Catlin offers both historical and contemporary perspectives on the meetings and conflicts between native and European worlds.
Online for about two years, this multi-award winning site from the Smithsonian's American Art Museum uses a Flash interface to showcase its collection of Catlin's paintings. The paintings are presented with historical documents as well as commentary from modern experts on art, culture and anthropology. >> continue
Wednesday, August 25, 2004, 08:26
Diaspora and Changing Identities: Korean Immigrants Are Not Always from Korea
Pacific News Service
LOS ANGELES -- Korean voices speaking Spanish, Russian or Portuguese in Los Angeles are those of the invisible immigrants who live among the largest Korean population in the United States. Hailing from places like Argentina, Brazil and Uzbekistan, they are a dispersed people within a community that they don't always identify with. This Diaspora has challenged notions of what it is to be Korean since its members all have widely varied experiences. >> continue
Tuesday, August 24, 2004, 23:06
Upcoming Ethnographic Filmfestivals
There are at least 12 ethnographic film festivals somewhere on this planet until the end of the year. Check the August Newsletter of the Nordic Anthropological Film Association >> continue or use the direct link to the rtf-document
Check also the overview at Visualanthropology.net
Tuesday, August 24, 2004, 22:26
American Ethnologist: Book Reviews in Full-Text!
You're not allowed to read their articles, but American Ethnologist's book reviews are available for the general public! >> continue
Currently, the American Ethnologist seems to reorganize its homepage and plans to add some interactive features like forums and blogs. >> continue
Monday, August 23, 2004, 16:13
The complex relationship between culture and technology
Telepolis
During the 4th conference on "Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication", Internet researchers from about 30 countries focused on the differences, the potential conflicts and cultural discrepancies in cyberspace understood as a "urban metropolis".
A special focus was laid on the investigation of the ICT access and usage by indigenous peoples. The ritual collective artwork of Australian aborigines seems to be endangered by a second expropriation in the anonymous global data worlds. On the other hand, a multi-lingual Internet could help to rescue small languages at the edge of extinction to survive in a kind of virtual reservoir.
Especially exciting were those presentations paying attention to alternative forms of Internet usage by the seemingly unprivileged and marginalized cultures. Thus the escape from spatially closed Internet-environments in South America or India underlined the potential creativity of these non-conventional solutions (Rodrigues). >>continue
(found via ethno::log)
Monday, August 23, 2004, 08:26
The 'earth house' recreates a traditional Lebanese lifestyle in exacting detail
The Daily Star - Lebanon News
TERBOL, Lebanon: In an old peasant house in the village of Terbol, everything is so perfect, so miniature that you'd think you were wandering around in a doll house. The "Earth House," as this newly opened museum in the Western Bekaa is called, aims to revive the traditional house style of the rural Bekaa region.
"This project was conceived thanks to a book by anthropologist, ethnologist and photographer Hoda Kassatly called "Terres de Bekaa"", said the museum's coordinator Nicole Nachnouk.
"The Earth house is just what we and the younger generations need to get over our 'lost memory' and to remember how our ancestors used to live," the Bekaa photographer Kassatly said. And indeed, as Kassatly explained further, the museum is specially dedicated to the Bekaa inhabitants whose "ignorance and lack of interest" in their ancestors' culture is "alarming." >> continue
Sunday, August 22, 2004, 12:38
Science of shopping becomes big business
Star Tribune
Ethnography gave the world disposable diapers (Kimberly-Clark), a big green "Copy" button on copy machines (Xerox), smaller dishwashers (Whirlpool) and easier-to-open hearing aid battery packages (Duracell). Ethnography convinced General Mills that children felt independent when they ate meals on the run. The result: Go-gurt, a portable yogurt snack that is sucked out of a tube.
Ethnography isn't the only discipline that consumer products companies are turning to for a leg up on their competitors. But it is ethnography that really has taken off in the past five to 10 years, said Marietta Baba, a professor of anthropology and dean of the College of Social Science at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich.
"With global competition, companies need new corporate weapons," said Baba, who developed one of the country's first business and anthropology courses. "Anthropologists have a way of understanding people that's fresh." >>continue
Friday, August 20, 2004, 16:00
Anthropological Films online
For those of you with a fast broadband connection: On the website of the Visual Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Social Science, University of Tromsø, you can download / view several anthropological films:
Conversation with the Weyto (by Zerihun Abebe):
This film is about a small group of people, found in northwest Ethiopia and categorized as Weyto. In the conversation, which my friend and I made with some members of the group, I tried to convey the voices of the Weyto and also the virtual experience of being Weyto. >> continue
Boys Will Be Boys (by Brigt Dale):
A film shot during student fieldwork in social and visual anthropology, "Boys Will Be Boys" tells the story of the inexperienced fieldworker, trying to master a foreign environment, and how his appearance and behaviour produce knowledge. >> continue
Across troubled Water (by Petia Mankova):
The film is about the everyday life in Krasnoschelye, an isolated village in the heart of the tundra on Kola peninsula (North-West Russia) and how the local eople experience the political and economic reforms of the last ten years. >> continue
UPDATE: The Nordic Anthropological Film Association has listed around 110 films that you can watch online (broadband)
Friday, August 20, 2004, 10:00
Internet and development in India
CNN
-- For 12-year-old Anju Sharma, hope for a better life arrives in her poor farming village three days a week on a bicycle rickshaw that carries a computer with a high-speed, wireless Internet connection.
Designed like temple carriages that bear Hindu deities during festivals, the brightly painted pedal-cart rolls into her village in India's most populous state, accompanied by a computer instructor who gives classes to young and old, students and teachers alike.
The bicycle cart is the center of a project called "Infothela," or info-cart. It aims to use technology to improve education, health care and access to agricultural information in India's villages, where most of the country's 1.06 billion people live. >> continue
(found via Danny Yee's Blog)
Friday, August 20, 2004, 09:58
Research Shows FCC and Chinese American Families Share Similar Issues
scanews.com
What is Chinese cultural heritage? How do we pass it on to the next generation, particularly as it changes in the context of U.S. society? These are issues shared by many adoptive Chinese families and Chinese American families.
Since 2000, Dr. Andrea Louie, a cultural anthropologist from Michigan State University, has been interviewing St. Louis area families who have adopted from China. Her research focuses on whether, how, and why adoptive families teach their children about China and Chinese culture. She conducts her research by participating in adoption-related events, such as those organized by local adoption agencies and by the St. Louis chapter of Families with Children from China. She also interviews adoptive families about their adoption stories and attitudes toward China and Chinese culture. >> continue
Friday, August 20, 2004, 09:38
Researchers claim to have solved the mystery of the people who don't count
The Guardian
The Piraha of the Amazon have almost legendary status in language research. They have no words at all for number. They use only only three words to count: one, two, many. To make things confusing, the words for one and two, in Piraha, are the same syllable, pronounced with a falling or rising inflection.
And to make things really difficult, the word for one can sometimes mean "roughly one", and the word for two can sometimes mean "not many". The Piraha have puzzled anthropologists for decades.
Peter Gordon, a behavioural scientist at Columbia University in New York, reports in Science today that the Piraha may may not be very good at counting because because they do not have the words for it. >> continue
READ ALSO
Gordon's study will not resolve the debate about whether language can shape thought in other examples (Nature)
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