PhD students at the Social and Cultural Anthropology Department of Barcelona University have started a new journal called (con)textos. Their aim is to make known the research that is carried out during the doctoral period and to set up a space for debate and training.

The texts in the first issue are in Spanish only, but in future issues, texts in English will appear as well ("Texts may be written in Catalan, Spanish, English, French, Italian and Portuguese"). All texts ate published with a Creative Commons licence. It is even possible to comment articles.

>> visit (con)textos

How has Free Software transformed not only software, but also music, film, science, and education? Anthropologist and Savage Minds blogger Christopher M. Kelty explores this question in his new book “Two bits” that now is “available for purchase, for download and for derivation and remixing” as he writes.

A really web 2.0 book in other words. It is both available on paper (published by Duke University Press) and online - freely accessible. Both book, blog and wiki!

From the book description:

Drawing on ethnographic research that took him from an Internet healthcare start-up company in Boston to media labs in Berlin to young entrepreneurs in Bangalore, Kelty describes the technologies and the moral vision that binds together hackers, geeks, lawyers, and other Free Software advocates.
(…)
Kelty shows how these specific practices have reoriented the relations of power around the creation, dissemination, and authorization of all kinds of knowledge after the arrival of the Internet.

>> more information about the book

>> website of the book

SEE ALSO:

Why were they doing this work just to give it away for free? Thesis on Ubuntu Linux hackers

2006 - The Year of Open Access Anthropology?

The Internet Gift Culture

Ethnomusicologist uses website as an extension of the book

Militant jihadists are inspired by their night dreams according to a study by a social anthropologist Iain Edgar, according to Malaysia Sun.

The researcher interviewed individuals in the UK, Pakistan, Northern Cyprus and Turkey to identify the key features of the inspirational night dream. He also reviewed transcripts including that of Osama Bin Laden, who has spoken of the night dream in the context of his concern that “the secret [of the 9/11 attacks] would be revealed if everyone starts seeing it in their dreams.”

According to Iain Edgar, dreams were interpreted to justify violence and legitimise actions. At the Cheltenham Science Festival on the cultural significance of sleeping and dreaming, Edgar said:

Islam is probably the largest night dream culture in the world today. The night dream is thought to offer a way to metaphysical and divinatory knowledge, to be a practical alternative and accessible source of inspiration and guidance, to offer clarity concerning action in this world.

Even if reported jihadist dream narratives are fabricated, the fact that Muslims often believe them and are mobilized to jihad partly on their account is of significance".

Overall, how Moslems, and people in general, understand their night dreams is a powerful tool in assessing their worldview and implicit key motivations.

>> read the whole story

Iain Edgar has studied the relationship between night dreams and culture, between dream imagery and human behaviour for twenty-five years. He writes more about his dream research in the text “Encountering the ‘true dream’ in Islam: a Journey to Turkey and Pakistan” (pdf)

He has also written a text about Anthropology and the dream

Robert Fisk has commented on his research in the Independent, see his article Visions that come to men as they sleep

SEE ALSO:

Extremism: “Authorities -and not Imams - can make the situation worse”

Protests against British research council: “Recruits anthropologists for spying on muslims”

Selected quotes from “On Suicide Bombing” by Talal Asad

Conflict Resolution and Anthropology: Why more scholarship on violence than on peace?

The story of the so-called “uncontacted tribes” in the Amazon has made its way around the world (even to Norway!). At the same time, there is a complete lack of interest in the story of indigenous people being publicly humiliated in Bolivia, the CultureMatters author Jovan Maud notes.

Are indigenous groups only interesting as long as they are “uncontacted” and “lost"? Has this something to do with obscure notions of “purity"?

Anyway, the anthropology blog CultureMatters has done a great job in deconstructing the “uncontacted tribes"-myth and criticizing organisations like Survival International that use this myth in their work to help indigenous peoples. CultureMatters-blogger Greg Downey writes:

While I certainly agree that small pockets of cultural diversity should not be aggressively assimilated, I feel a little queasy that we have to sell the drive for cultural autonomy and respect for foraging peoples with the whole ‘never seen a white man’ drivel. The term ‘uncontacted’ is part of the problem; ‘isolated’ would be better, as these groups have seldom ‘never seen a white man.’

(…)

One of the reasons these groups are attracting attention is that they are under pressure, especially on the Peruvian side of the border, not only from the usual suspects (miners, loggers, and ranchers), but also from a French petroleum company that wants to drill in the area.

Why can’t we go with that story: protecting the environment, wildlife, and the local people’s ways of life against the shattering impact of wreckless resource extraction to feed petroleum addiction? Why do we have to stoop to the whole ‘they think the plane is a giant bird or spirit’ and ‘their way of life was unchanged for 10,000 years’ cannard?

The CultureMatters-author was interviewed by ABC Radio in Melbourne about this issue and they started discussing the common idea that it is ‘inevitable’ through ‘progress’ that people like this will have to disappear.

He comments:

I wonder if all those ‘well, it’s sad but that’s the inevitable cost of progress’ really even think for thirty seconds about what they’re saying: are they saying that every acre of land that might support people who want to hunt or gather food, inevitably, must be drilled, logged, burned, or dug up for minerals? Really?

>> read the whole story on Culture Matters “‘Uncontacted Indians?!’ — contact an anthropologist!”

Savage Minds followed up with Stone-Age Links and a post The myth of the “untouched” Amazon that concludes that “today’s hunter-gatherers might be descended from the builders of four-lane highways, bridges, moats and canals".

And Maximilian Forte writes (in a satirical post) about a maybe even greater discovery Four New Tribes Discovered: 3 in the USA, 1 in Iraq

With similar thoughs in my head, I wrote one year ago “Help the Hadza!” - Why focus on culture and not on human rights?

See also earlier posts:

Peru: Another “uncontacted tribe"?

Anthropologists condemn the use of terms of “stone age” and “primitive”

Our obsession with the notion of the primitive society

Primitive Racism: Reuters about “the world’s most primitive tribes”

“Stone Age Tribes", tsunami and racist evolutionism

“Good story about cannibals. Pity it’s not even close to the truth”

Ancient People: We are All Modern Now - Debate on Savage Minds

Do anthropologists have anything relevant to say about human rights?

The number of young newspaper readers is declining. In order to better understand the behaviors of young readers, Associated Press commissioned a team of anthropologists to follow 18 young individuals around the world and examine their media habits, the Editors Weblog reports.

The Anthropologists found few major cultural differences. “The young digital consumers in Hyderabad were very similar to the ones in Silicon Valley in the United States", said Jim Kennedy from AP.

The researchers uncovered the social aspects of reading news: Almost all of their informants shared news with each other, through text messages, emails and social networks. “These young consumers are looking up to news as a form of social currency", Kennedy said.

Strangely enough, 16 of the 18 individuals consumed news through email, “a popular and powerful platform that often tends to be discounted by traditional media", according to the Editors Weblog.

The full results of the study will be presented at the 2008 World Editors Forum in Gothenburg, Sweden, to be held June 1-4.

>> read the whole story on the Editors Weblog

SEE ALSO:

Ethnographic Study on “Digital Kids”

Why the head of IT should be an anthropologist: The true value of IT will come not from information or technology per se but from the social side

Introduction to “Media Worlds": Media an important field for anthropology

Online: EASA-conference papers on media anthropology

After five years participant observation, anthropologist Jenny Ryan has published her masters’ thesis about the social network sites Facebook, My Space and Tribe.net. She created a beautiful web version of her thesis at http://www.thevirtualcampfire.org/

In her thesis, she proposes that everyday involvement with these sites can be metaphorically represented as a “virtual campfire” that “bridges the gap between the place of the hearth and the space of the cosmos, potentially reversing what has been called “the disintegration of the public sphere” (Habermas 1962: 175).

She explains in her introduction:

Thousands of years ago, our early human ancestors gathered around campfires, creating communal hearths of warmth and light. There they might tell stories, converse about the day’s events, perhaps engage in shamanistic rituals involving plants, music and dance, or simply gaze silently at the flames in collective meditation.

Today, the fireplace in my family’s living room shares its centralizing power with the television, around which we gather with our laptops and cellphones by our sides. Our time spent together is increasingly mediated by new technologies, enabling new forms of storytelling, altering our processes of individual and collective identity formation, and extending the possibilities for creating and maintaining social relationships.

(…)

My central argument in this thesis is that online social networks can potentially serve as both places of the hearth and avenues to the cosmos. Over time, these sites function as personal records of one’s experiences and relationships. These archives are made up of a variety of forms akin to older modes of record keeping, such as address books, journals, diaries, photo albums, personal correspondences, and yearbooks.

Additionally, they serve as gateways to the greater milieu, enabling the circulation of information about the world and granting members the capacity to participate in various ways. For teenagers and marginalized groups, in particular, these sites can be safe spaces for exploring and experimenting with identity, as well as for connecting to new people and ideas.

Ryan plans to add interactive features to the website version of her thesis, maybe she’ll turn it into a wiki, she writes in her blog.

>> visit The Virtual Campfire

>> Jenny Ryan’s bog

SEE ALSO:

Cyberanthropology: “Second Life is their only chance to participate in religious rituals”

The Birth of a Cyberethnographer: The MU5 is to Blame

Interview with Michael Wesch: How collaborative technologies change scholarship

Why anthropologists blog: Blogs more interesting than journals?

Another way of doing fieldwork: Developing websites with your informants!

Ethnographic research on Friendster’s online communities

How internet changes the life among the First Nations in Canada

Ethnographic Study About Life Without Internet: Feelings of Loss and Frustration

The Internet Gift Culture

Have anthropology journals ignored students? Is this one of the reasons for the popularity of anthropology blogs? Anthropology journals are not well known among students, Owen Wiltshire writes in his class assignment Why do anthropologists blog? A mini ethnography, a story, and a field report:

A restrictive publishing environment gives little voice to students. Not only that, but anthropology journals have ignored students and perhaps in doing this they have missed out on generating a name for themselves. As more and more material becomes freely available online, it becomes a matter of knowing where to look – and my small survey of students revealed that journals are not well known.
(…)
My small survey revealed that students had a hard time identifying a prestigious journal in their field, and the survey from Savage Minds shows that graduate students make up a large percentage of the readership. In my exploration of blogs I found a number of graduate students writing them. So perhaps the limited distribution of academic publishing contributes to the desirability of the blogsphere.

Owen Wiltshire found much “interesting thought” in the blogosphere and wonders if journal publications would only serve for the purposes of gaining prestige: “Everything is being said in conversations elsewhere, but is ‘proved’ in journals".

In his text, he discusses several reasons for why anthropologists blog - or do not blog. Among other things he talked to several anthropologists who wish there was more room for new ways of writing anthropology.

Several students don’t want to share their thoughts online because they fear of having ideas “stolen":

Another anthropology professor discussed the way societies he had studied were hierarchical, depending on secrecy and not necessarily the democratic exchange of knowledge – but as my interviews revealed many students worry that ideas can be stolen, and this is perhaps another reason people might have to not blog. Anthropologists in this sense are a hierarchical organization too, and secrecy is indeed a reason many do not feel comfortable sharing or discussing their ideas.

Here is his prelimarlary summary:

Why do Anthropologists Blog?

• Public engagement – feedback from beyond the discipline
• Less formal – much broader range of style, more complex ways of manipulating knowledge
  (video, text, dynamic content)
• Community, feedback. Enjoy discussing ideas with others.
• Prestige – great place to get known, at least by other anthro bloggers
• Younger generation growing up with online publishing – not worried about privacy as much
• Perhaps an escape from work/professionalism when reflecting on anthropological ideas

Why Don’t Anthropologists Blog?

• Fear that their work isn’t good enough
• Do not want to have their name associated with it
• Generally not part of internet culture – accessibility
• Lack of time – anthropology is a professional topic – there aren’t many “amateur
  anthropologists” - although this is one thing many bloggers want to change
• Fear of having ideas stolen – desire to “own” ideas.
• Prefer traditional publishing mediums – books
• Desire for more filtered knowledge
• Desire to maintain privacy outside of work

Wiltshire explored this issue by participation in the blogosphere through his own blog, and reading and writing on numerous other anthropology blogs. He also discussed blogging, sharing information, and public engagement with a focus group of six students, and multiple interviews with students and one professor – all at Concordia University.

>> read the whole text on Wiltshire’s blog

>> Follow-up post: forced vs free writing: “Students ignore journals, just as much as journals ignore students”

Related issues are discussed by Erkan Saka in an e-seminar at the EASA Media Anthropology Network 19 May - 1 June 2008. “Blogging as a research tool for ethnographic fieldwork”.

SEE ALSO:

Plans to study anthropological online communities and Open Access movement

Interview with Michael Wesch: How collaborative technologies change scholarship

antropologi.info survey: Six anthropologists on Anthropology and Internet

Paper by Erkan Saka: Blogging as a Research Tool for Ethnographic Fieldwork

On fieldwork: “Blogging sharpens the attention”

Blogging and Public Anthropology: When free speech costs a career

Danah Boyd on Open Access: “Boycott locked-down journals”

Success in publishing defined by quality? Anthropology Matters on “The Politics of Publishing”

(via CultureMatters) While Israelis celebrate the 60th anniversary of their state’s founding, Palestinians around the world are mourning the “Nakba” - or “catastrophe” - that drove so many into exile. SPIEGEL ONLINE interviewed anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod on the Nakba and today’s Palestine.

Together with Ahmad Sa’di, she published the book “Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory”. Abu-Lughod’s father was Palestinian.

“I don’t see the anniversary as a time of mourning but as an occasion for trying to get the world to listen to what really happened and to think about how this should shape our vision of a solution", she says:

Palestinians and Israelis are tightly entangled. Any resolution must involve a recognition of the fact that Israel was founded on the expulsion of Palestinians. Then we can think and talk together about restitution, redress, compensation, or whatever it takes for a more just way forward. In Israel and Palestine we have an amazing opportunity – to think about changing history by considering a democratic state with a living future for everyone.

The number of those who actually lived through the Nakba decreases every year. The Nakba commemoration has spurred storytelling, the anthropologist says:

Dr. Rosemary Sayigh, who has been interviewing Palestinians about their experiences for decades, describes her work as a race against time. But Diana Allan, an anthropologist from Harvard who has been videotaping old men and women in the refugee camps all over Lebanon to create a Nakba Archive, would be the first to insist that though it is important to get these stories, it should not distract us from the contemporary problems Palestinians face, in Lebanon and elsewhere.

I have been following with interest, though, the way this particular Nakba commemoration has galvanized people and spurred storytelling: a good example is the series of “untold stories” on the Web site of the Institute for Middle East Understanding.

>> read the whole interview in SPIEGEL ONLINE

For information on her book on Nakba, see the Columbia University Press blog, The Institute for Middle East Understanding, This Week in Palestine and the review on H-Net.

SEE ALSO:

Lila Abu-Lughod: It’s time to give up the Western obsession with veiled Muslim women

New book by Lila Abu-Lughod: The Politics of Television in Egypt

Interview with Lila Abu-Lughod on women and Islam in the wake of the American war in Afghanistan (Asiasource)

Anthropologists on the Israel-Lebanon conflict

“Voices": Anthropologist publishes e-book about Palestinian women