A documentary film-maker and academic with a doctorate in anthropology from Oxford University, Fiona Graham has just become what she says is the first non-Japanese in 400 years to debut as a geisha. But she hasn’t become a geisha for private reasons: She is now recording her life on film according to The Independent:

Sometime soon, she says, the world will see the results: a rare, scholarly inside look into one of the most closed societies in Japan. “It will be unique,” she insists. “Most Westerners who have tried to write about the traditions have failed because they never really lived the life. I’m going to represent the society that I’m living in now, as it is.”

Graham (or Sayuki as she now is called) has been doing anthropological fieldwork in Asakusa - one of the oldest of Tokyo’s six remaining geisha districts - for the past year, living in a geisha house (okiya), and participating in banquets as a trainee. She first came to Japan on an exchange programme from Melbourne aged 15. Fluent in Japanese, she has spent time working in Japanese companies and as a journalist.

It seems that it was during her fieldwork she learned to become a geisha:

The training involves learning how to walk, talk and dress, and master several skills, such as the tea ceremony and the three-stringed shamisen, and her own speciality, the Japanese bamboo flute, which she practises every day. Then there are the rules of being in an okiya, or geisha house.
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Her duties will include attending parties at these venues, pouring drinks and entertaining guests. “Everything is carefully rehearsed,” she explains. “When I open a sliding door I have to be on my knees, and stand up. Then close the door again on my knees. Learning what kimono to wear and when … there are many, many little customs like that.” Despite a year of training, she says she is still “not confident” about choosing the appropriate kimono to wear.

Geishas are traditional, female Japanese entertainers, who dance, sing and chat to high-paying guests, usually men (Wikipedia on Geishas / BBC Photo journal Geisha / about.com about Geishas)

According to Fiona Graham, Geishas are “strong, independent businesswomen who control their own lives. They were among the first independent women.”

>> read the whole story in the Independent

>> first coverage by the Telegraph

The anthropologist-geisha has her own website http://www.sayuki.net/ (not so much content there yet, though)

SEE ALSO:

Book review: Ritual praxis in modern Japan

“A unique art form” - Anthropological Research on Anime

Pop goes Japanese culture: Japan’s most visible export isn’t economic, but cultural

Why cellular life in Japan is so different - Interview with anthropologist Mizuko Ito

Anthropologist examines influence of robots in Japan

Can anthropology help us to understand the current Wall Street crisis? Of course. Anthropologist Gillian Tett is an assistant editor of the Financial Times. “It is undoubtedly an unusual background for a financial journalist", she writes:

Indeed, whenever I reveal my strange past today, bankers usually either react with horror (what does she know about finance?) or incredulity (why would anyone spend years studying Tajik goat-herders?). But a decade later, my years in Tajikistan are suddenly starting to look a whole lot more useful.

For one thing that anthropology imparts is a healthy respect for the importance of micro-level incentives and political structures. And right now these issues are becoming critically important for Wall Street and the City, as the credit crunch deepens by the day.

One of the important issues is the culture of power:

(G)roups such as Citi or Merrill appear to have developed a more hierarchical pattern, in which the different business lines have existed like warring tribes, answerable only to the chief. Moreover, the most profitable tribe has invariably wielded the most power - and thus was untouchable and inscrutable to everyone else. Hence the fact that, in this tribal culture, nobody reined in the excesses of the structured finance teams at Citi and Merrill.
(…)
(W)hat is crystal clear is that if you want to understand which banks will emerge as winners from the current mess, it is no longer enough to look at their computer systems and balance sheets. Now, more than ever, investors need to understand a bank’s culture too - and the degree to which it is tribal. As I said, a training in Tajik anthropology is suddenly looking very useful.

>> read the whole article in The Financial Times

>> Steve Portigal comments on this piece

Gillian Tett has also written Office Culture - good overview about corporate anthropology

>> more pieces by Gillian Tett

SEE ALSO:

An anthropologist finds insight into Japan’s bad-loan crisis

UPDATE: ScientificCommons was closed down in 2014

How can I find research papers and theses that are freely available? ScienceCommons is a search engine and portal that is still in beta but now lists 893 repositories (according to Peter Suber at Open Access News). A search for anthropology gives more that 44 000 hits but a quick check reveals that not all papers or theses are open access.

ScientificCommons.org is a project of the University of St.Gallen (Switzerland) and hosted and developed at the Institute for Media and Communications Management:

The major aim of the project is to develop the world’s largest communication medium for scientific knowledge products which is freely accessible to the public. A key challenge of the project is to support the rapidly growing number of movements and archives who admit the free distribution and access to scientific knowledge

>> visit ScientificCommons

There is another search engine as well: OAIster. There a search for anthropology gives 54679 records - but also included some papers with restricted access (f.ex. from journals like Current Anthropology)

See also 2007 Highlights over at Savage Minds: “2007 was a great year for the open access movement".

SEE ALSO:

Already lots of publications in the open access anthropology repository Mana’o

2006 - The Year of Open Access Anthropology?

For Open Access: “The pay-for-content model has never been successful”

Sounds familiar: People on online dating sites are experiencing frustration because it does seem that the internet in many ways is just the same old bar scene. This is one of the findings of research by anthropologist Susan E. Frohlick. She is conducting an ethnographic study of online dating among women age thirty and above.

She says the women on the one hand gained a sense of empowerment from their online dating experiences. But they still wanted the man to make the first move and expected him pick up the tab:

Women are finding it as a useful tool to enter into the dating world, they find that it’s safe, they find that they can be a little more bold than they would in face-to-face relationships. But, at the same time, they are experiencing frustration because it does seem that the internet in many ways is just the same old bar scene.

Complaints include a preponderance of men who are looking for much younger women, as well as men who misrepresent their looks, interests or marital status, or who show little interest in moving the relationship offline, she said.

>> read the whole story on News.com.au LINK UPDATED 30.6.18

Furthermore, women are hesitant to admit that they meet men through the Internet.

Frohlick says:

One of the most striking findings so far is that there’s a huge contradiction between what women say about the popularity of online dating sites on the one hand and, on the other hand, their own sense of almost shame, and certainly secrecy about it. They talk about how it’s for losers.

Frohlick says she hopes the study will shed more light on how the online dating world might be changing women’s sexuality. She would like to find more study participants from across Canada, including women who are looking for same-sex partners.

>> read more in Canoe.ca LINK NO LONGER AVAILABLE

She is part of the project “Surfing for Love” at the University of Manitoba. The study will be completed in May, 2008, and a summary of the results will be posted online, she writes on her homepage.

SEE ALSO:

Sexual anthropologist explains how technology changes dating, love and relationships

Denise Carter: The Birth of a Cyberethnographer

Ethnographic research on Friendster’s online communities

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

Last year’s podcasts from the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) have received much attention. This year they are continuing the project, Jen Cardew writes on the SfAA-Podcast Blog. She is also looking for six team members who can participate in the podcasting project at the 2008 SfAA Annual Meeting, March 24 - 29, 2008, in Memphis, TN. The deadline for applications is January 28, 2008. >> more inforation on the SfAA-Podcast Blog

I’m off to Portugal for two weeks. Unfortunately I haven’t had time to update the blog recently. Happy holidays and see you next year!

MANAO - new Open Access repository for anthropology was announced for the first time not more than two months ago. Now, already 82 publications can be read and downloaded - both theses, conference papers, monographs and book chapters - including the papers Alex Golub gave at AAA-meeting and other publications by Savage Minds bloggers.

>> visit Mana’o

SEE ALSO:

MANAO - new Open Access repository for anthropology to be launched

antropologi.info survey: Six anthropologists on Anthropology and Internet

Open Source Anthropology : Are anthropologists serious about sharing knowledge?

First issue of open access journal “After Culture” is online

Omertaa - Open access journal for Applied Anthropology

For Open Access: “The pay-for-content model has never been successful”

Open Access: “The American Anthropological Association reminds me of the recording industry”

2006 - The Year of Open Access Anthropology?

Is female circumcision violence against women or a feminist act? Are critics of this practice guilty of cultural imperialism? Those questions were debated at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in Washington - among others by African anthropologists who have undergone the procedure themselves.

New York Times blogger John Tierney has written two interesting posts on the debate incl links to books and papers, among others by Fuambai Ahmadu. She has argued that the critics of circumcision exaggerate the medical dangers, misunderstand the effect on sexual pleasure, and mistakenly view the removal of parts of the clitoris as a practice that oppresses women. Ahmadu writes that her Westernized “feminist sisters insist on denying us this critical aspect of becoming a woman in accordance with our unique and powerful cultural heritage.”

>> read the whole post by John Tierney: “A New Debate on Female Circumcision”

>> two papers by anthropologist Fuambai Ahmadu on circumcision

In his second post, John Tierney askes anthropologist Richard Shweder for more information about he health risks, benefits, and the actual effect of the procedure on the lives of those subject to circumcision.

Shweder reviews existing research and concludes that “the harmful practice claim has been highly exaggerated and that many of the representations in the advocacy literature and the popular press are nearly as fanciful as they are nightmarish":

The best evidence available at the moment suggests to me that the anthropologist Robert Edgerton basically had it right when he wrote about the Kenyan practice in the 1920s and 1930s as a crucible in which it is not just the courage of males but also the courage of females that gets tested:

“…most girls bore it bravely and few suffered serious infection or injury as a result. Circumcised women did not lose their ability to enjoy sexual relations, nor was their child-bearing capacity diminished. Nevertheless the practice offended Christian sensibilities”.

(…)

At the panel on “Zero Tolerance” policies held on Saturday at the American Anthropological Association meeting, one of the participants Zeinab Eyega, who runs an NGO concerned with the welfare of African immigrants in the USA, noted that these days in New York “the pain of hearing yourself described is more painful than being cut.”

Shweder thinks it is noteworthy or even astonishing that in the community of typically liberal, skeptical and critical readers of the New York Times there has been such a ready acceptance of the anti-circumcision advocacy groups’ representations of family and social life in Africa as dark, brutal, primitive, barbaric, and unquestionably beyond the pale".

>> read the whole post: “Circumcision” or “Mutilation”? And Other Questions About a Rite in Africa

>> papers by Shweder on circumcision

More about the AAA-meeting:

New media and anthropology - AAA meeting part III

“The insecure American needs help by anthropologists” - AAA-meeting part II

Final report launched: AAA no longer opposes collaboration with CIA and the military - AAA meeting part I