Zaman Daily, Turkey

Being the meeting point for many peoples and cultures in global tourism activity, Antalya and its environs are turning into a permanent homeland. People from different cultures, nations and with different mentalities, continuously buy land in Antalya, choosing it as their second homeland. Like a junction, Turkey is hosting a new sociological structure that came along with globalization >>continue

Go Asia Pacific

The Alele Museum in the Marshall Islands has joined with the Historical Preservation Office to launch a new internet website, in English and Marshallese. The aim is to make Alele's collection more accessible to students, researchers and the wider public. In the Marshalls, cultural officers are working to protect fragile records of the past, like the De Brum collection, thousands of etched glass plates, with pictures of Micronesia from past centuries. >>continue (link updated)

Cape Times, South Africa

Dr Cecil Helman, born in Cape Town, is a family practitioner, anthropologist and the author of the widely used text book Cultural Dimensions of Illness used in all major universities in Britain and over 120 medical schools in America. He believes the Western medical model is insufficient and traditional medicine is slowly and surely going up a cul-de-sac.

According to Helman, reductionism is at the core of modern medicine and is driving it into a lung, a heart or an artery and away from a whole person. It reduces the complex idea of human suffering down to the disease of a particular organ, distorting the picture as it does. >>continue

The Hindu

"COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION" and "Community managed and government supported" approaches are buzzwords in the realm of development cooperation. The discourse on gender analysis in development planning has contributed to an increasing interest in women and water management issues.

This book attempts a historical analysis of gender by describing the prominent role played by women in the Tehbaga and Naxalbari agrarian peasant movements that swept the three districts of the small-scale irrigation projects. The volume should contribute to the ongoing theoretical debate in women's studies and feminist anthropology on how to achieve an optimal "gender planning" with the aim to strengthen and/or to empower women in developmental interventions. >>continue

The Dallas Morning News

If they lean back in the chair, away from him, he's got more work to do. But if they lean forward, he knows in a few minutes they'll be huddled with him over a contract. "There's so much you can glean from observing the distances between people when they interact," says Dr. William Pulte, anthropologist, linguist and associate professor in Southern Methodist University's Education Department.

Proxemics, the study of how people perceive and use the space around them, was founded in the 1950s by anthropologist Edward T. Hall, and popularized in several of his books – "The Silent Language" (1959) and "The Hidden Dimension" (1966). Hall observed that humans like to keep their distances from one another, and that those distances vary according to social interactions. >>continue

New York Times

You've probably heard that the presidential candidates have been crossing the country arguing about Iraq and taxes, but, as usual, the press has ignored the true anthropological significance of their journeys.

"Ritual is absolutely central to modern politics," Professor David Kertzer, an anthropologist at Brown University, said. "The press wrings their hands at what they call the lack of substance at conventions, and some people think of political rallies as being outmoded or even dangerous, but rituals like these are essential for creating solidarity and allegiance to a leader." >>continue

MSNBC / San Jose Business Journal

When Genevieve Bell agreed to leave Stanford University for a job at Intel in 1998, it was with trepidation. She had, after all, been working her entire life toward being an academic, following the tenure track and accepting that practical applications of her work might never become apparent. "My vision was to survive the first year and not go insane," she says now.

It's not that she thought Intel was such a bad place to be. Quite the opposite. She just couldn't see why a semiconductor company would want a technologically challenged cultural anthropologist on staff.

Now, as she writes up a final report on her three-year study of how Asian families interact with technology, Ms. Bell can't imagine working anywhere else.

Ms. Bell has been credited with performing a remarkable job by making anthropology accessible -- and worthwhile -- to scores of engineers all over the world. >>continue

The Globe and Mail

One hundred years ago, three Ainu couples, a lone male and two young girls travelled to the United States to take part in a living exhibit arranged for the crowds at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. They lived in a large thatched hut on the fairgrounds, part of a global village in which peoples from around the world -- called the primitives -- were on display.

In a run-up to the third Olympiad being held in conjunction with the world fair, U.S. officials organized something called Anthropology Days. "Hairy Ainus" were pitted against "savage Zulus" and other aboriginals in sporting contests to determine strength and speed. Anthropology Days was organized by the heads of the anthropology and physical education departments of the world exposition. The idea was to test the popular notion that "the average savage was fleet of foot, strong of limb, accurate with the bow and arrow and expert in throwing the stone." The two-day contest was held in mid-August when many scientists were attending the fair.

The crown jewel was a 47-acre site organized by the U.S. government to display the conquered peoples of the Philippines, the newest American possession acquired during the recently concluded Spanish-American War. An homage to imperialism, the exhibit was designed to show how America would bring progress to savage peoples. >>continue