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Summer anthroblog round-up

Published on August 8, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, books, corporate & business anthropology, fieldwork / methods, Us and Them

(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)

(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…

Book review: Witchcraft in South Africa

Published on August 5, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, books, culture traditions, religion cosmology

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

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…

Locating Bourdieu – Interview with anthropologist Deborah Reed-Danahay

Published on June 24, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, persons and theories

Interesting interview by Scott McLemee with anthropologist Deborah Reed-Danahay on her recent book Locating Bourdieu in the magazine “Inside Higher Education”. The book is according to Scott McLemee “a very good place for the new reader of Bourdieu to start”.

Reed-Danahay summarizes one of Bourdieu’s main points and compares France to the USA:

“Bourdieu believed that we are all constrained by our internalized dispositions (our habitus), deriving from the milieu in which we are socialized, which influence our world view, values, expectations for the future, and tastes. These attributes are part of the symbolic or cultural capital of a social group.

In a stratified society, a higher value is associated with the symbolic capital of members of the dominant sectors versus the less dominant and “controlled” sectors of society. So that people who go to museums and like abstract art, for instance, are expressing a form of symbolic capital that is more highly valued than that of someone who either rarely goes to museums or who doesn’t like abstract art.

The person feels that this is “just” a matter of taste, but this can have important consequences for children at school who have not been exposed to various forms of symbolic capital by their families.”

“His work on academia provided us with a method of inquiry to look at the symbolic capital associated with academic advancement and, although the specific register of this will be different in different national contexts, the process may be similar. Just as Bourdieu did in France, for example, one could study how it is that elite universities here “select” students and professors.”

>> to the interview in “Inside Higher Education”

Interesting interview by Scott McLemee with anthropologist Deborah Reed-Danahay on her recent book Locating Bourdieu in the magazine "Inside Higher Education". The book is according to Scott McLemee "a very good place for the new reader of Bourdieu to start".

Reed-Danahay…

Book review: Ritual praxis in modern Japan

Published on June 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, books, culture traditions, religion cosmology

The Japan Times Online

Anthropologist Satsuki Kawano in her study of various ritual practices in the city of Kamakura wishes to see religious rites as being both culturally constructed and socially generated. Kawano prefers to demonstrate that partaking in religious rituals does not necessarily involve “belief” in its ordinary sense. Rather “ritual life is not so much about individual faith as it is about securing the well-being of families and communities.” >> continue

The Japan Times Online

Ethnomusicologist uses website as an extension of the book

Published on June 14, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, fieldwork / methods, internet, music, websites

(via Fieldnotes): Ethnomusicologist Aaron Fox has set up a website and blog as an “extension of the book”: “I’m not going to republish the book on the site, but the book deals so much with sound that I had to make it possible for people to hear the music”, he explains and adds: “I also really wanted to be able to interact with readers — as we are doing now! Seems to me this is just the most under-used capacity of the web as an adjunct to traditional publishing. It’s not like academic books sell in the tens of thousands, so it seems perfectly reasonable and possible to enter into a real dialogue with serious readers.”

Anthropologist Tad McIlwraith on Fieldnotes comments: “I think about this in the context of my work with First Nations people and wonder if I could convince them to allow their actual voices to be found in files on my website. I think my work would be enhanced if they’d agree to that.”

Aaron Fox’ book is called Real County: Music and Language in Working Class Culture and is according to Tad McIlwraith “a fantastic ethnography”.

(via Fieldnotes): Ethnomusicologist Aaron Fox has set up a website and blog as an "extension of the book": "I'm not going to republish the book on the site, but the book deals so much with sound that I had to…