Tellef Kvifte, Popular Musicology Online

Folk music and popular music represent in many ways two distinct cultural spheres with few contact points. The 'folk' in the folk music tradition are a construct of the national romantic era, usually referring to peasants, living close to nature, while the folk of the 'popular' are more constructs of urban and modern society.

Given the fundamental differences in ideology one finds here, it may be surprising to find a strong alliance between the two groups. What I have in mind here is that of 'world music', ethno pop', 'ethnic wave' or, as I call it, 'global romanticism'. >> continue

PS: Popular Musicology Online publishes papers in fulltext online. It "is published exclusively online and is a free, un-funded academic resource available to scholarly and general public readerships with an interest in debates on popular music" and is edited by Stan Hawkins, Department of Musicology, University of Oslo, Norway.

"Rebekah Nathan" isn't the only anthropologist who is studying students.

The article in Democrat & Chronicle starts like this (quite typically for journalists who are somehow puzzeled by recent changes in anthropology)

On and off for two years, anthropologist Nancy Foster lived with and observed the Wapishana, an indigenous tribe in Guyana and northern Brazil whose members live as hunters, farmers and fishermen. Now she's studying a group nearly as exotic — college students.

And it goes on:

Employing the same methods numerous companies use to study their workers, University of Rochester's River Campus library system is dissecting how its students live and work. The goal is to figure out ways of making the library more accessible to them for research papers and other projects.

The work comes on the heels of a similar study led by Foster of UR faculty to see how they used the library, particularly its online offerings. The result was that UR faculty now have personalized pages on the library's UR Research Web site — it being a repository of various studies and papers done by faculty.

>> read more in the Democrat & Chronicle (updated link)

PS: We read about the possible consequences of this research. Students might be able to send an instant message to a reference librarian with questions. Something similar is already possible at the public library in Oslo. You can send sms and chat with librarians, see here

www.biblioteksvar.no/en/

IPS

- Seven intercultural universities in Mexico are going a long way towards preserving the historical and cultural roots of the country's indigenous community, which comprises more than 10 percent of the country's 106 million people. The universities are dedicated to promoting alternatives for the development and integration of Mexico's 62 native ethnic groups. One is the new intercultural university in the impoverished southern state of Chiapas, where the Zapatista guerrillas staged an uprising in January 1994. >> continue

Norwegian anthropologist Christian Stokke has published his thesis "Unlearning White Superiority. Consciousness-raising on an online Rastafari Reasoning Forum" in full length. From his introduction:

The ensuing interracial dialogues on racism are the main focus of my thesis. Most whites define racism as prejudice and discrimination, and suggest good intentions and “colorblindness” as a solution, while Blacks define it in terms of group dominance, structural inequality and cultural hegemony. Black Rastas point out that whites tend to show dominating behavior in the discussions, and see this as a reflection of a “white superiority complex.” Black Rastas consistently confront whites and hold them responsible for their conduct, although it is usually unintended and unconscious. Through this confrontation, many whites become aware of their taken-for-granted ‘white privilege’ and start “unlearning white superiority.”

>> download the thesis (pdf, 788kb)

Ethan Zuckerman, Global Voices

The BBC has a long tradition of encouraging readers and listeners of their Africa service to talk about their views of the continent. BBC is going a step further, looking for people with interesting stories to tell, arming them with digital cameras and encouraging them to get posting. >> continue to Global Voices (many links to recommended blogs!)

>> go directly to BBCs "My Africa - Africa Diaries"

(Post in progress)

Here a short summary of some stories published during the summer break:

Most discussed: Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs and Steel" and the reasons for differences in progress for different societies

From a summary of the debate in Inside Higher Education (via Keywords):
Diamond focuses on the impact of geography — whether food and other key items were plentiful, whether and how disease spread, and how these developments led to different levels of industrialization, and wealth. "The book overlooks a fundamental issue: the inequality within countries as well as between them,” Kerim Friedman writes. “I assure you that logging industry executives in New Guinea live better than you or I do! Both New Guinea and the United States are far more unequal (by some measures) than is India." >> read more in Inside Higher Education

>> read the whole debate at Savage Minds (116 comments!!!)

Field Work at Mac Donalds Drive-Through. Coca-Cola hired an anthropologist to find out how to sell more Coke to car drivers and the anthropologist didn't have more than 40 seconds per informant >> read the whole story "Ronald, patron saint of ethnography" by Grant McCracken (inkl lots of comments!)

Online-Research on age cohorts Charu writes: "I am very curious about what experiences we grew up sharing…. Internet ? Technology ? Liberalization ?" Her idea: to understand the events, ideas, values that have shaped her generation (mid-70’s born, the over-20, 30 ish) and to experiment with the possibility of blogs as a tool for primary research…. >> continue to her post on "A Time To Reflect"

Ethnographic Research on African Village in the Zoo published Nina Glick Schiller, Data Dea and Markus Höhne (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany) did some fieldwork in the zoo. One of their findings: "Organizers and visitors were not racist but they participated in and reflected a process that has been called racialization: the daily and often taken-for-granted means by which humans are separated into supposedly biologically based and unequal categories." >> read the summary and download the report

( >> earlier posts on the African Village)

(via Putting People First) Worldchanging has "tracked projects that use new technologies to empower indigenous cultural survival -- from digital applications using Inuktitut, the Inuit native language, to the Aboriginal Mapping Project, which harnesses the power of GIS to help indigenous peoples manage their lands and resources, to the networked reindeer tracking of Saami Networked Connectivity Project". Additionally, they point to the latest volume of Cultural Survival Quarterly. It is devoted to Indigenous Peoples Bridging the Digital Divide. Much to read! >> continue to Worldchanging

PS: Worldchanging is a blog devoted to "Models, Tools, and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future" and Dina Mehta (Conversations with Dina) is one of the contributers

SEE ALSO:

Women in Cameroon:Information technology as a way out of the cultural cul-de-sac

Modern technology revives traditional languages

Internet and development in India

Gary Kynoch, H-Net reviews Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy by Adam Ashforth

Many Northern academics, along with their African counterparts, are reluctant to engage with the concept of witchcraft for fear of appearing to label Africans as primitive. However, like it or not, notions of magic and witchcraft often play a prominent role in politics, armed conflict, perceptions of health and sickness, and all manner of social relationships. Instead of ignoring this basic reality, we need to acknowledge and investigate these dynamics.

Adam Ashforth embraces this challenge with his declaration that "no one can understand life in Africa without understanding witchcraft and the related aspects of insecurity". Beyond simply describing the purchase that witchcraft has on life in Soweto, Ashforth sets out to examine the relationship between witchcraft beliefs and democracy in South Africa. >> continue