(via anthronaut) Cyberanthropologist Alexander Knorr has written a brilliant comment on "social sciences software licence madness". Provoked by an entry at ethno::log about a text analysis software for social scientists with an extremly restrictive licence, he wrote among others:

The minimum fee for using the software for academical purposes amounts to 192,- Euros. plonk* Usage duration is limited to a maximum of one year. :o Do I get this right?(...) The copyright holders of GABEK® aim at a certain academical group as potential customers. As GABEK® is to be used for "a thesis (e.g. master thesis etc)", and the project has to be "no larger in scope than a dissertation".

Well, till some years ago I was within that group, too, and I wrote a doctoral thesis. Interested in the results? Well, go and buy the book, 395 pages of glossy paper, containing a juicy story of anthropology, sex, drugs, magick, and rock'n'roll. For 19,- Euros, 13,- Euros if you are a student. If you have bought the book, it's your property, you can do with it whatever you want to. You can read it until you die, you can put it below your table-leg if that one happens to be exactly 2,1 cm too short, or you can make a bonfire of it. As you wish, it's your property then. No interest in spending nineteen Euros? Then, the fuck, download the whole piece of shit. The exact .pdf-file from which the printer made the book is online for free, CC-licenced. Welcome to the 21st century.

(...)

Information wants to be free, especially information and knowledge generated within academia. And academical knowledge that I am generating — if I ever really will, that is—for sure doesn't want to be the property of the maker of the tools I used to generate it. Adobe never asked me to send them one of my books for free, just because I used software they created to make a .pdf of my text.

Slap a CC-licence onto your product and write some sane terms of use for academics and I may, I may, have a look into the usability of your software for the noble discipline of sociocultural anthropology. Welcome to the Internet, to the blogosphere, and again to the 21st century.

>> read the whole post at Xirdalium

SEE ALSO:

The unacknowledged convergence of open source, open access, and open science

Tearing down those knowledge walls. Knowledge cannot be curtailed and has to be freely available

Virtual Ethnographer’s Toolkit: Invitation to a software fantasy

On Copyright and taboo and the future of anthropological publishing

Open Access Anthropology - Debate on Savage Minds

Special on Open Access Anthropology

Savage Minds has recently done an excellent job in hosting guest bloggers. During the following weeks and months, you might also read entries from guest bloggers here on antropologi.info. My main objective is to to broaden the anthropological community / blogosphere by recruiting anthropologists that have never blogged before, but you might also find texts by other bloggers on specific topics.

PS: While both anthropology.net and Savage Minds follow the American 4-field-approach, the focus here on antropologi.info is rather on the British tradition of social anthropology (or lesser known traditions).

UPDATE:
First Guest Blogger: Denise Carter. Her first post: The Birth of a Cyberethnographer: The MU5 is to Blame

Back from the annual conference of the Norwegian Anthropological Association, I must say that I prefer Norwegian conferences to British ones - at least regarding the way papers are presented. While papers in Britian are read - in a formal (and mostly boring) way, papers in Norway are presented in an more oral way. The audience expectes you to make them smile or (even better) laugh - otherwise you aren't regarded as a good paper-giver. "I could have listened to him for several hours", many participants said after the presentation by Edvar Hviding about fishermen on the Solomon Islands (many brilliant pictures!). Many great presentations!

Maybe culture can explain something here? Norwegian society is quite egalitarian compared to other countries and academics are frequently present in mainstream media. You are expected to be "folkelig" - meaning "like normal people" and tear down the walls between academia and the people outside.

SEE ALSO:

What's the point of anthropology conferences?

How To Present A Paper - or Can Anthropologists Talk?

PS: By the way, Antropyton announced that she's going to share her thoughts about the conference with us (I'll be blogging in Norwegian only).

Kerim Friedman at Savage Minds recently announced a new series about classical works in anthropology which are available online. The idea, he writes, is to "both encourage newbies to read some classical anthropological texts as well as allow those with Ph.D.s in the discipline to debate the contemporary value of these works".

The first entry: Laura Bohannon: “Shakespeare in the Bush” - the essay that turned Kerim on to anthropology:

It explores how difficult it is to translate Shakespeare’s Hamlet into the cultural idiom of the Tiv in West Africa (the Tiv are mostly located in Nigeria). While the article takes on a straw-man argument (the idea that there is something universal about Shakespeare’s plays overlooks just how hard it is for even American school kids to learn to appreciate Hamlet), it is a well written article which I believe holds up to the test of time.

>> read the whole post at Savage Minds

There has been a lot of focus on anthropologists and human rights recently. But being engaged is easier said than done. Police Beat and Gas Students at the National School of Anthropology and History is the headline of a story on Narco News. They were part of a demonstration against rights abuses by the Mexican police:

Students from the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), of the School for Science and Humanities (CCH) South and the National Pedagogic University (UPN), among other adherents to the Other Campaign, were blocking the “Periférico Avenue” highway near the ENAH when they were attacked with pepper gas and clubs by members of the Mexico City police.

"It was a day of energy and rebellion for the students. This could be the genesis of a real movement coming out of the solidarity of the classroom", NarcoNews writer Juan Trujillo concludes.

Valentina Palma Novoa is one of the victims of police violence. She's originally from Chile and student at the National School of Anthropology and History, and tells us about the background of the demonstration some days ago:

On Wednesday, May 3, after seeing the news on television and learning of the death of a 14-year-old boy, I was moved by the death of this small child and, as an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, decided to go to San Salvador Atenco.

The day after:

It must have been about 6am when the church bells of San Salvador Atenco began to ring – bong, bong, bong, over and over again – while a voice shouted over the loudspeaker that the police were surrounding the town. Bicycles hurried past in every direction.

(...)
I zoomed in with my camera. I saw that there were many of them and that, covered by their shields, they were advancing with small and nearly imperceptible steps. I was afraid. There were many of them, heavily armed, while the farmers were few and unarmed. In the screen of my camera I saw one of the police point and shoot a projectile towards us; when it landed next to me, I could smell and feel that it was tear gas.

(...)

I was panicked and didn’t want to come down from the roof; then a police officer yelled up to me, “Come down here, bitch. Come down here now.” I came down from the roof slowly, terrorized by the sight of the boys being beaten in the head. Two police officers took hold of me and pulled me forward while others beat me on the chest, back and legs with their clubs.

She was then arrested and expelled from the country.

>> read her whole account on NarcoNews

UPDATE (23.5.06)

Global Voices author David Sasaki has made an impressive research on this topic - read >> Mexico: Violence and Backlash in San Salvador Atenco

MORE INFO:

Foreign women photographers beaten and abused by Mexico City police (Reporters Without Borders)

Police Attack Mexico City Students Protesting the Violence in Atenco

Students Maintain Blockade Despite Repression. Police Beat and Gas Students at the National School of Anthropology and History (Narco News)

Police raid in Mexico exposes deep rift (Mercury News)

Protesters choke Mexico City (Washington Post)

London says 'We are all Atenco!' (Indymedia UK)

Subcommandante Marcos: Either Release All Prisoners from Atenco, Or We All Go to Jail" (Narco News)

(Links updated 7.9.2020) A Montreal newspaper story has rapidly sent Filipino tempers rising around the world. Luc Cagadoc, a 7-year-old pupil, was punished by a lunchtime day-care monitor: “You are in Canada. Here in Canada you should eat the way Canadians eat,” the Quebecois educator allegedly said, and went on to observe that Luc “ate like a pig.” The reason: Luc insisted on eating with a spoon and fork as most Filipinos do.

"Educators and parents alike should find ways to work together to avoid traumatizing children who deserve more than to be made to feel inferior because of their parent’s culture", the editor (I suppose) of the Philippine Daily Inquirer comments (text no longer online).

In a follow-up article called "Spoon Wars" (no longer online), anthropologist Michael L. Tan gives us more information about food, eating habits and cultural history (that's the role anthropologists should play, isn't it?):

For Filipinos, and most Asians, spoons were the greatest invention ever. Throw away the knife and the fork but never the spoon, which we use for soups, desserts, vegetables, even to cut meat.

Anyone with knowledge of culinary history can tell you the spoon was the first eating utensil to have been invented. Knives, well, they were originally invented as weapons, and then got reduced for the dining table. And the fork, the infamous fork that westerners insist is the main eating utensil? They come much later, introduced from the Middle East into southern Europe, but treated with disdain by the northern Europeans.

(...)

Etiquette changes all the time because they’re based on meanings we give to people, events, places. In earlier less civil times, meals could become quite violent so the last thing you needed were utensils brandished like weapons, which is why the Chinese resisted knives and forks and stuck to chopsticks.

(...)

But don’t worry, with 8 million Filipinos living and working in Canada and all kinds of other remote, savage lands, many infiltrating homes as nannies and cooks and housekeepers, we’ll teach the world that the proper way of eating is with a spoon and a fork.

Michael L. Tan is an engaged anthropologist. He publishes most of his columns in a blog called Pinoy Kasi. His older texts can be found at http://www.pinoykasi.homestead.com. His current texts are available here: https://opinion.inquirer.net/byline/michael-l-tan

Three interviews that I've conducted earlier this year have been translated from Norwegian to English:

Take on the multiculturalism debate - Interview with Alexa Døving
Does culture exist? What is integration? What defines Norwegianness? Is nationalism excluding? How useful are cultural explanations? Should special rights be awarded on cultural and religious grounds? What groups make up a society? Alexa Døving has chosen to write about the big issues. >> read the interview

Unni Wikan with plans for a new book about immigrant men, honour and dignity
Previously Unni Wikan has been interested in immigrant women and children. She now wants us to be more concerned with the men. Better insights into the mens’ situations could prevent conflicts, says the anthropologist, who is working on the analysis of two court cases to do with honour killing and forced marriage. >> read the interview

To engage the reader with a complex message - Interview with Anja Bredal
Do not underestimate free will and do not trivialize coercion! This is the conclusion in Anja Bredal’s doctoral thesis on arranged marriage. After ten years of research, one doctorate and several journal and newspaper articles this sociologist is still interested in the topic. She wonders about one thing in particular: How is it possible to maintain a nuanced moderate position and yet still be interesting? >> read the interview

At the Society for Applied Anthropology Meetings this year Hugh Gusterson had a startling experience: A “practicing anthropologist” refused to tell me him who or what, she studies. That has never happened before. In the article Where Are We Going? Engaging Dilemmas In Practicing Anthropology in Anthropology News May 2006, Guterson poses fundamental quiestions. The number of anthropologists working for industry and government agencies grows. So:

Who owns applied anthropological research—the researcher or the sponsor? If applied research is confidential, and thus exempt from peer review, how do we assure its quality and integrity? What recourse is there for an anthropologist under contract of confidentiality who decides they have an obligation to make public what their sponsor wants to keep quiet (say, information about indigenous opposition to a dam, or native Americans’ experience of abuse at the hands of the Department of the Interior, or corruption in the Pentagon or the World Bank)?

Is it acceptable to study people not in order to advocate for them or to interpret them in the open literature, but for the purpose of providing privileged information to sponsors who want to control them? What will happen to our professional meetings, to their warm conviviality, if more people come to them refusing to discuss their research? And how is our discipline even to keep track of possible conflicts of interest if anthropologists are refusing to identify their research in public?

He continues and concludes:

One colleague suggested that we acknowledge two separate communities: those doing academic anthropology and those doing what he called “dirty anthropology” (as, I think, in “quick and…”). He suggested each have its own ethical guidelines. But do we really want to say that anthropologists are no longer a single community guided by a common code of conduct?

The rise of neoliberal applied anthropology is a scandal waiting to happen. We ignore it at our professional peril. It is time to lay out some clear rules of the road to give guidance to applied anthropology colleagues working on this new frontier, and to enhance their bargaining power with powerful contractors.

>> read the whole article in Anthropology News (link updated)

SEE ALSO:

Ethnography a Buzz Word in the Industry - Where is the Quality Control?

"War on terror": CIA sponsers anthropologists to gather sensitive information

Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of Their Curious Relations

Murray L. Wax: Some Issues and Sources on Ethics in Anthropology