I wanted to write this post long time ago. As you might have noticed, there haven’t been any new posts on this blog since the 24th of October last year.
So what has happened?
Well, at about the same time I wrote my last blog post, the most wonderful woman entered my life. Two months later we already got engaged. And in a few months, I hope, we will get married.
So yes, now I am a truly engaged anthropologist! !
Getting married in Egypt is for me a wonderful, but not actually a cheap endeavour. My economic situation forces me therefore to focus on my paid job at the University in Oslo. Nevertheless, I hope there will be some time for blogging and developing the website soon. I really miss it and I’d like to start up again!
In the meantime you can have a look at the website of the new research project by anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen that I am currently working for. It’s called Overheating. The three crises of globalisation.
Here is some of the stuff I’ve written there:
- Anthropologists to study humanity’s biggest crises (Interview with Thomas Hylland Eriksen)
- Of Suicides and Offshoring (An increasing number of companies move their businesses to low cost countries. Elisabeth Schober is studying what offshoring means for workers and local communities)
- When melting glaciers take away people’s water (Poor people are most affected by climate change, economic crises and discrimination. Anthropologist Astrid Bredholt Stensrud wants to find out how people go about it)
- – Academics, speak out against neoliberalism! (It was one of the worst economic crashes in history: A conversation with anthropologist Gísli Pálsson about the meltdown in Iceland, dubious entanglements between universities and business, racist and sexist neoliberal discourses, and the need for academic activism)
Good to see you back!
Thanks, Kerim!
Great to have you back, and congrats!
Thanks a lot Martijn!
I have followed some of the new UiO project that you are working on. I think it’sinteresting that a few years ago, I (as a master student!) was the main cause of a “red scare” among anthropologists in Oslo (professors quote in front of class upon noticing my presence: “If the Marxists are coming back, it’s time for me to retire”), and now saying many of the same things is not only acceptable, but even funded anthropology research. Initiatially I had asumed that politics and study fields had no corelation. After a while I came to the conclusion that in fact the different institutes each were dominated by certain political factions which were much morepositive towards students from their own ideological tradition than others. The divisions were something like:
Political science: social democratic right or right wing party,
Sociology: socialist left party (SV),
Social Anthropology: yes to immigration and yes to free trade (Norwegian party “Ventre”)
Social Geography: anti-globalization movement/Red Voting Alliance
Criminology: hardcore anarchist activists, Blitz
History: extremely conservative, so much that they weren’t very scared of people like me. Mostly concerned about finding a national Norwegian charactr in the events around 1814 and similar strange things.
The Zeitgeist has changed. That is good. I hope the departments are all more open to people from different political camps now. Good luck!
Very interesting, delayed thanks, Johannes! Yeag, People seem to wake up now. But generally, and this is the most surprising thing I learned after more than eight years freelancing, Universities are generally very conservative institutions