Tibet Information Network has published a huge collection of pictures about different topics like Culture and Society, Education, Environment and Religion >> continue

(via tibet.ethno.info)

The Guardian

Virtually every area of humanistic scholarship and artistic activity in the latter part of the 20th century felt the influence of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who has died aged 74 from pancreatic cancer.

"Deconstruction", the word he transformed from a rare French term to a common expression in many languages, became part of the vocabulary not only of philosophers and literary theorists but also of architects, theologians, artists, political theorists, educationists, music critics, filmmakers, lawyers and historians. Resistance to his thinking, too, was widespread and sometimes bitter, as it challenged academic norms and, sometimes, common sense. >> continue

SEE ALSO
More on Derrida in Wikipedia
Jacques Derrida Online (site navigation on the top)

TownOnline.com

A team of researchers from several fields at the University of Michigan is launching a study of why people laugh at cartoons. Come on, guys: Because they're funny! That's not good enough for the psychologists, linguists, anthropologists, historians and others who will be able to confront their subjects with every cartoon every published in The New Yorker magazine, all 68,647 of them. (no longer available online), see more here: What's so funny about humor (The New York Times / kniff.de)

The New York Times

Facing increased discrimination after the Sept. 11 attacks, New York City's Muslims have identified more deeply with their religious roots, setting aside the sectarian and linguistic differences that have traditionally divided them according to a six-year study released yesterday by Columbia University.

The study also assessed news coverage of Muslim Americans before and after Sept. 11 and concluded that negative visual depictions of the group rose substantially after the attacks.

The study, financed by the Ford Foundation, provides the most comprehensive look yet at the religious, social and political affiliations of New York City's estimated 600,000 Muslims both before and after Sept. 11, 2001, and involved work by more than a dozen academic researchers and professors. It was coordinated by Louis Abdellatif Cristillo, a Columbia anthropology professor >> continue or use this link (Islam Online)

SEE ALSO
Press release by Columbia University

The Guardian

What happens when you let a sharp-eyed anthropologist roam the corridors and meeting rooms of the British Broadcasting Corporation for several years? You get this, a fascinating patchwork of interviews, testimonials, diary entries and analysis that offers distressing evidence - if any still were needed - of the ideological vandalism committed by John Birt in the name of efficiency. >> continue

SEE ALSO
More info on the book "Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the reinvention of the BBC"Research project: The Future of Public Service Broadcasting (Cambridge University)

Anne Lau Revil's homepage

Software design is usually undertaken by IT specialists, who have a technical training. Few have a sociocultural background. In this paper I will show several examples of software design as sociocultural adjustments, and more specifically how anthropologists may contribute.

Finally, I will discuss how the value of the anthropological contribution to the development of software systems may be improved through the development of more flexible methods of communicating the research to both the academic world and the user community. >> continue (pdf, 14 pages) or go to Anne Lau Revil's homepageJoel Spolsky: Over the next decade, I expect that software companies will hire people trained as anthropologists and ethnographers to work on social interface design (found via Conversations with Dina - Dina Mehta's Blog)

UPDATE Links updated with copy from the Internet Archive. The website was removed.

Forum: Qualitative Social Research (FQS)

The aim of this article is to discuss the lessons learned from conducting semi-structured interviews online in an ethnographic study that took place in Saudi Arabia during the period 2001-2002.

The purpose of the study was to explore individuals' participation in online communities in Saudi Arabia and also understand how online communities in Saudi Arabia are affecting participants' offline culture. Semi-structured online interviews were used to report the perceptions of 15 participants (8 females, 7 males) about their online community experience in Saudi Arabia. >> continue

PS: This article is part of the 16th Issue of the open-access journal "Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research" (FQS) that now is available online.

International Herald Tribune

On Wednesday, European commissioners in Brussels are likely to give their approval for Turkey, which has been a member of NATO since 1952, to begin talks to join the European Union.

Yet in the crucible of the Ruhrgebiet, the industrial region around Essen, East has lived with West for 50 years. It is here that answers can be found about whether an earlier wave of Turkish migrants has integrated successfully and what it means today to be European. >> continue