Swedish universities have launched a new website www.essays.se which gives access to several thousands University papers:

Every year tens of thousands of Swedish university students spend many million hours researching and writing their final theses. The end result - all the essays - is a knowledge resource of great weight. However, up until quite recently, it was common that the finished essays where stored away in the darkest corners of the university libraries, where no-one would ever find them.

This problem led way to the Swedish website Uppsatser.se. The website was launched in 2004, with the goal to become a knowledge platform that could bridge the knowledge-gap between university students, schools and companies in Sweden.

Essays.se - the english language version of Uppsatser.se, was launched in november 2007. It is meant for all of people who do not speak Swedish, but still want to take part of the research carried out by Swedish students.

Essays.se and Uppsatser.se co-operate with the LIBRIS-department at the National Library of Sweden.

A search for anthropology gives 23 matches.

Additionally, there is the portal http://www.diva-portal.org/ that lets you find theses, dissertations and other publications in full-text from a number of mainly Swedish universities.

For Norwegian archives, see:DUO (University of Oslo) - MUNIN (University of Tromsø) - BORA (University of Bergen) and Theses from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Trondheim)

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Nice interview with anthropologist Alan Klima in University paper The California Aggie about anthropology in general.

For example the anthropologist’s answer to the question how he became interested in anthropology:

I was always interested in social theory, thinking about what is going on in the world and at one point in college I realized that there are all of these different ways of thinking, ways of doing things around the world - that there is no way you could really understand humans and society and history without understanding all of the variety in the world.

So I guess I was eventually very interested in U.S. society and social problems and had a lot of thoughts about that and realized that you can’t really understand these things unless you understand the tremendous variety in the world.

Or his definition of anthropology:

Sociocultural anthropology is the study of all alternative world knowledges. Political knowledges, religious knowledges, scientific knowledges, medical knowledges - that there are a lot of different ways to think about things.

The situation of anthropology in the US:

I think for most professors in the U.S., that you’re sort of a class of people that’s not very well respected in the wider society, and often your voice doesn’t count in a direct way, unlike in other countries in the world, where if there’s an issue the television might come to the university and ask professors what they think. But that doesn’t happen so much in the U.S.

Or look at his his comparision of anthropologists with garbage collectors when he is asked if anthropologists can change the world:

I also think of it (work as anthropologist) as sometimes as similar to people who collect the garbage. They are not changing the world, but if they didn’t do it, things would get really messy. Somebody’s got to do that. Somebody’s got to be in the academy thinking all kinds of experimental and critical thoughts and sharing that with students and thinking that over with students. If we didn’t have that, things would be a lot worse. I can’t really say that I or any of the other professors are totally changing the world for the better.

>> read the whole interview in The California Aggie

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Another example of anthropologists in product development: As a consequence of anthropological research, Xerox is developing a new kind of paper where the printed information simply disappears within about 16 hours, allowing the paper to be reused.

Why this? Xerox-anthropologist Brinda Dalal, an anthropologist at Xerox, found out that 21 percent of copier documents ed up in the recycling bin on the same day they are produced. In most offices, paper is used as a medium of display rather than storage. Paper is only only printed out or copied when needed for meetings, editing and annotating, or reading away from a computer. The result is, of course, an enormous quantity of waste paper and environmental problems.

>> read the whole story on ZDNet

Actually, the New York Times wrote about this self-erasable paper one year ago. They called anthropologist Brinda Dalal for “garbologist”. She told, she was surprised by the results: “Nobody looks at the ephemeral information going through people’s waste baskets.”

>> Publications by Brinda Dalal (several papers to download)

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Participants in the debate on Islam often overestimate the authority and influence of imams. The role of the imam is especially limited when it comes to so-called “second and third generation immigrants". This is the conclusion reached by anthropologist Welmoet Boender in her dissertation Imam in Nederland, for which she was awarded her doctorate at the University of Leiden on Tuesday, according to expatica.com:

Boender’s research shows that not only the imam in the mosque defines appropriate standards and values and behaviour for the faithful, but television sheiks, internet imams, friends and family members and (translated) books also play a role. (…) In the public debate the imam is often seen as an instrument to integrate Muslims in Dutch society. (…) In light of the limited role that imams play for many Muslims, he will most likely fall short of this task.

>> read the whole story on Expatica.com

The dissertation is not online (yet?). I have not found any information in English. For those who do read Dutch, the blog Closer by Martijn de Koning of course provides more information in his post Imam in Nederland - Welmoet Boender.

I’ve found an older texts by Welmoet Boender though Imams in the Netherlands: An Impression.

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A few days ago, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) decided to oppose the embedding of anthropologists in military teams (HTS) in Iraq and Afghanistan. The use of anthropological knowledge in the U.S. military and the militarisation of anthropology has been the most discussed topic among anthropologists this year.

We read:

The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association concludes (i) that the HTS program creates conditions which are likely to place anthropologists in positions in which their work will be in violation of the AAA Code of Ethics and (ii) that its use of anthropologists poses a danger to both other anthropologists and persons other anthropologists study.

Thus the Executive Board expresses its disapproval of the HTS program.

In the context of a war that is widely recognized as a denial of human rights and based on faulty intelligence and undemocratic principles, the Executive Board sees the HTS project as a problematic application of anthropological expertise, most specifically on ethical grounds. We have grave concerns about the involvement of anthropological knowledge and skill in the HTS project. The Executive Board views the HTS project as an unacceptable application of anthropological expertise.

To facilitate discussion on this subject, the AAA has created this blog as a forum for members to post comments regarding the Executive Board statement and related issues. Currently, their first and only blog post about the Board statement has 64 comments!

It was fascinating to see how quickly the anthropological blogosphere reacted. Short time after the publication of the statement, the first blog posts appeared:

L.L. Wynn at Culture Matters summarizes the statement and the first reactions.

Alex Golub, Savage Minds sounds enthusiastic:

The statement clearly (in my humble opinion) shows the influence of SM (Savage Minds) and the anthropological noosphere more generally on the AAA exec board and every reader, commenter and Mind should be proud to see that this is really a case of our community forming a ‘civil sphere’ that can inform AAA decision making.

I am blown away by the quality of the comments on the AAA blog, as well as the fact that they are published by professors writing in their own name. This is the first time I have seen the anthropology professoriate as a professoriate. I hope that the AAA blog become a major site in the anthropological noosphere.

Kambiz Kamrani, anthropology.net is not so happy about the decision and summarizes some criticisms.

One of the most detailed commentary can be found on the blog Open Anthropology by Maximilian Forte. After having read through over 60 comments on the AAA blog he wrote the post Empty Scholasticism at its Best on the AAA Blog. See also his comment Politics and Ethics: Anthropologists and Human Terrain Systems.

Futhermore, Forte noticed that the AAA still has job adverts for the HTS by the U.S. military on its website (see an example). “This should be a source of embarrassment for the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, although thus far there is little indication of any", Forte writes.

UPDATE (17.11.07):“The AAA disapproving of HTS is unfortunate, U.S. militrary anthropologist Marcus Griffin writes. “Anthropology will have failed to take advantage of an important opportunity to make a difference in the world". >> continue reading on his blog (link updated)

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(LINKS UPDATED 21.9.2020) More and more people live in mega cities. Rather than fixating on investing in the countryside, donor agencies need to recognize that people want to come to the big cities. And rather than demolishing squatter developments one should integrate these self-made communities into the surrounding neighborhoods, anthropologist Janice Perlman said in a lecture according to Multi Housing News.

The cities whose populations are expected to increase the most Mumbai, Lagos and Mexico City etc) are according to the anthropologist also the least equipped to handle the massive influx of people. The world’s slums will likely become even more massive in scale, and this, in turn, will hinder the ability of many cities to be truly sustainable. However, according to Perlman, there are steps that can be taken now to avoid an ecological disaster.

The anthropologist is the founder and executive director of the Mega-Cities Project, a transnational nonprofit network that strives to aid urban dwellers around the world. It concentrates its efforts to make cities more socially just, ecologically sustainable, politically participatory and economically productive.

>> read the whole article in the Multi Housing News

According to the Megacities website, Perlman is about to finish a book on the dynamics of urban poverty in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The book’s working title, Marginality from Myth to Reality: Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, 1969-2005 is based on field research she has done over that period of time. This study documents what has happened to the original study participants of her 1969 research which became the classic book, The Myth of Marginality: Urban Politics and Poverty in Rio de Janeiro (UC Press, 1976).

She explains:

As a young graduate student in 1968-69, during the height of the Brazilian military dictatorship I lived in three favelas in Rio de Janeiro and interviewed 250 residents in each.
(…)
I discovered that the prevailing stereotypes of favela residents (which I termed the myths of marginality) were “empirically false, analytically misleading and invidious in their policy implications” – as they were used to justify the eradication of favelas. My book created a paradigm shift from “blaming the victim” to recognizing migrants as highly motivated urban pioneers and from socio-cultural modernization theory to structural dependency theory.
(…)
How has life changed over the last three decades? (…) The answers are paradoxical. While the material condition of life has improved, the human condition has deteriorated. The fear of favela eradication has been replaced by the fear of being killed in the cross-fire between drug gangs and the police. Despite the return to democracy after the 20-year dictatorship, people feel more excluded and say they have less bargaining power than before; and despite community upgrading, the poor feel more marginalized than ever.

She has put online several papers on her research in Rio’s favelas, environmental justice and related issues.

>> visit the Megacities Project website

Related: Thomas Hylland Eriksens review of Mike Davis’ The Planet of Slums

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The Ann Arbor News (Michigan) interviews anthropologist Ruth Behar who has written a new book about Jewish life in Cuba. The island’s tiny Jewish community is among the most diverse in the world.

“An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba” offers not only profiles of Jews who live in Cuba, but details the author’s own history - wherein she, at age 5, left Cuba with her family at the time of the 1959 revolution.

She tells she was surprised about how Cuban Jews try to preserve the past. A lot of young people are willing to emigrate to Israel. Many times in the book, people mention the absence of anti-Semitism in Cuba. The anthropologists explains, people in Cuba / in the Caribbean are more tolerant:

Definitely it is helpful to Jews if they live in a culture that’s more secular than in a culture that’s heavily Catholic and Christian - especially if that culture continues to say the Jews killed Christ. This kind of thing does not exactly create good feeling toward the Jews. …

But we can’t give full credit to the revolution for this, because even before ‘59, Jews did not experience anti-Semitism, based on the stories that I heard from my family, my Polish grandmother. When she arrived, she said it was such a breath of fresh air from Poland that she just - people didn’t have the anti-Jewish stereotypes that they did in Poland and elsewhere in Europe.

So it was like a fresh slate. That was part of it, and I think the Caribbean is different, too, in that the African influence on Cuba is very important. The African religions are much more open and tolerant of difference.

>> read the whole interview

According to the Miami Herald, the book is “a narrative that tugs at the heart": It’s a collection of anecdotes and observations accompanied by black and white images shot by Cuba-based photographer Humberto Mayol:

In many respects, this may be Behar’s most personal work. The University of Michigan anthropology professor has written poems and essays about the nostalgia, grief and displacement of exile. She was also awarded a MacArthur Foundation ‘’genius'’ grant 18 years ago and even has a short feature film about Cuban Sephardic Jews, Adio Kerida, to her credit. But here she lovingly intertwines her own thoughts and feelings with the more analytical observations of her profession. The result: a narrative that tugs at the heart.

>> continue reading in the Miami Herald

>> Excerpts from An Island Called Home by Ruth Behar

On her own website, she describes herself as a “cultural anthropologist who specializes in homesickness":

I’m a memoirist who suffered from amnesia as a child after leaving Cuba. That must be why I’m obsessed with remembering and all the ways that history leaves traces on how we live in the present.

She has also started writing a web diary (a web1.0 blog)

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The first issue of “After Culture - Emergent Anthropologies” that was planned for release in September 2006 has finally been published, Savage Minds reports.

The journal is edited by anthropologist Matthew Wolf-Meyer . In his editorial he explains that After Culture is intended as international, open access, and run primarily by graduate students. One of the central issues for the journal is: How are we to explain the worlds we interact with and perceive when “culture” as an explanatory concept, as a causal force, had been debunked?

In the first issue we find among others an interview with George Marcus:

In the interview, Marcus reviews the common pitfalls of students’ first projects and offers his thoughts towards new framings of research design that can evolve out of “research imaginaries.” These new framings expose the tensions between the opportunities and pressures of collaboration in the field and older, simpler technologies of individual knowing. They also open the door to searching for critical data, challenging well-worn fieldwork tropes, and preparing for the reception of one’s work.

>> After Culture Volume 1

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