It's now easier to find older entries and pages. We're no longer dependent on the atomz free site search. As the maximum number of pages has been exceeded, not all pages were indexed. Now I've installed the isearch-search engine. The search is accessible in the menue on the left site of this page and on my anthropology search page.

As some of you might know, Yahoo has launched their social network tool Yahoo! 360º, including blog, photo sharing etc. In order to sign up, you need an invite. I have plenties of invites left, so if somebody is interested, drop a note with your email address and I'll send you an invite. Use the comment function or the contact form. By the way, I've got still lots of gmail invites...

Cairo Magazine

"Dramas of Nationhood. The Politics of Television in Egypt" by anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod is the first major work to analyze contemporary Egypt TV watching nation. 10 years went into researching and writing the book. Ten years spent watching television melodramas with Egypt’s subalterns to write a book that no one who watches television will ever read. It is an academic work that analyzes the “post-Orientalist epistemes” in the relationship between Egyptian melodramatic series and the (re)production of the nation/state.

In a region over-colonized by Western political scientists and journalists writing “behind the scenes” accounts, a book that takes seriously the oeuvre of Usama Anwar Ukasha (“the Naguib Mahfouz of Egyptian television”) comes as a breath of fresh air. >> continue (link updated)

SEE ALSO:

Lila Abu-Lughod: The Interpretation of Culture(s) After Television

Interview with Lila Abu-Lughod by Nermeen Shaikh of AsiaSource

American Ethnologist Book review: "The Anthropology of Media: A Reader" and "Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain"

Book review "Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod and Brian Larkin: Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain (Australian Journal of AnthropologyAugust, 2004 by Jennifer Deger - findarticles.com)

University of Buffalo Reporter

In a new book published last month by Random House, Barbara Tedlock, professor of anthropology, challenges the historical hegemony of the male shamanic tradition, restores women to their essential place in the history of spirituality and celebrates their continuing role in the worldwide resurgence of shamanism.

Tedlock's book, "The Woman in a Shaman's Body", also presents empirical studies that find common shamanic practices to be very effective in medical terms and discusses why this is the case. Women shamans, she says, have often practiced in the fields of healing, birthing children, gathering and growing food, keeping communities in balance, presiding over ceremonies and rites of passage, maintaining relations with the dead, teaching, ministering to those in need, communing with nature to learn her secrets, preserving the wisdom traditions, divining the future and dancing with gods and goddesses. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Ecstasy, Madness, and Spirit Possession in the Nepal Himalayas

Edward P. Wolfers, The National (Papua New Guinea)

The book "The Name Must Not Go Down: Political Competition and State-Society Relations In Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea" by Dr Joseph Ketan is primarily a study of political competition in the area around Mount Hagen. It began as a PhD thesis, and as a work of scholarly analysis, it is a mega-success.

The award of his PhD and publication of his book make Dr Ketan, himself a member of a local group, the Kawelka, in the Mount Hagen area, afully-fledged member of the academic community. As a member of one of the groups of whom he writes, Dr Ketan, is in the unusual position for a student of anthropology of being, at least in linguistic and many cultural terms, an insider from the community about which he writes. >> continue

Andrei Lankov, Australian National University, Asia Times Online

SEOUL - A defector from the North, a typical tough Korean auntie with trademark permed hair, smiled when asked about "men's role" in North Korean families: "Well, in 1997-98 men became useless. They went to their jobs, but there was nothing to be done there, so they came back. Meanwhile their wives went to distant places to trade and kept families going."

Indeed, the sudden increase in the economic strength and status of women is one of manifold changes that have taken place North Korea over the past 10 or 15 years. >> continue

(via Danny Yee's blog)

Sabina Magliocco, Anthropology News April 2005, American Anthropological Association

The commodification of indigenous spirituality is based on Romanticism’s construction of indigenes as more authentic, closer to nature and the sacred than Westerners; but it grew out of popular fascination with indigenous spirituality, fueled partly by ethnography and its imitators. By the 1980s a growing popular literature on New Age mysticism was emerging, drawing many concepts from Romantic notions of indigenous spirituality.

The commodification of spirituality led to outrage on the part of many indigenous peoples that white “wannabees” were playing at being Indian and appropriating their spiritual traditions. Some Native American groups decreed that only members of their own tribes would be permitted to practice certain traditions. Another possibility that appealed to some indigenous groups was to copyright their spiritual practices through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

The idea that the right to spiritual practice is determined by blood violates everything we know about the constructed nature of race, ethnicity and culture. As anthropologists, we cannot turn our backs on our most fundamental assumptions, even to protect indigenous groups whose spiritual traditions have been fetishized. Taken to its logical extreme, it leads directly to essentialization and racism. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Anthropology News April 2005 - Overview

The Angry Anthropologist has existed already since november last year. Looks like a very interesting blog dealing about social and cultural anthropology issues. In his first post, the anonym blogger with "background in economic anthropology, cognitive anthropology, and social network analysis" writes:

"So why The Angry Anthropologist? For decades anthropologists, especially cultural anthropologists, have had to fight misleading public images of their discipline, replete with popular notions of corduroy-wrapped professors nestled in comfortable offices, and never-ending salary checks. The reality is quite different. We have made important contribution to the fields of marketing, advertising, economics, development, public planning, and public health, and have even moved into business. Contrary to whatever documentary was recently aired on PBS, the vast majority of us are not physical anthropologists, or are endlessly seeking funding grants for obscure projects. We work in a variety of disciplines, and bring our expertise to bear on important questions of the day."

>> continue to The Angry Anthropologist

Washington Post

The Smithsonian Institution is entering the highly competitive world of music downloads by offering the Smithsonian Folkways collection of ethnic and traditional music in an online music store. Smithsonian Global Sound, the new project, will be formally launched during the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in June.

Global Sound will charge 99 cents a song, which are available in MP3 format. The Smithsonian will pay royalties to the artists, as its recording label has done with records and CDs. The Web site, www.smithsonianglobalsound.org, will allow searches by artist, geographic location, language, cultural group or instrument. All of the Folkways archives, including photographs, can be downloaded onto a screen. >> continue