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A First Look at Italian Anthropology

Published on July 4, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, websites

There are not many anthropologists in Italy that have websites in English. But some have. And in Italy they is an Open Access anthropology journal Antrocom that will be translated into English in a few months. I was contacted by the Italian Antrocom Press Office and provided with some links – so here a first look at Italian anthropology.

Duccio Canestrini runs Homo Turisticus, a web site dealing with the anthropology of tourism.

From the self description:

(The website) provides an original viewpoint of the touristic “species” and of recreational land uses. Travel myths, holiday rythes and touristic encounters are my personal research field.

Over the last decades it seems that everybody has travelled to just about everywhere. But there’s also something risky in the side effects of global tourism. We can do better. A responsible tourism should protect natural resources, respect different cultures and improve everybody’s quality of life.

Although ecotourism and sustainability are new buzz words, and in such risk dying of a dose of media overkill, new representations and new manners in tourism are investigated and largely practiced. Tourism likes and needs innovation. New ideas often come from social sciences.

In English, some articles and videos are available.

Laura Ciaffi is medical anthropologist who focuses on HIV/AIDS. On her website we can read her Cameroon Diary and download three papers about aids and health in Africa.

Cristina Grassen has started blogging on the Anthropology of Innovation.

Alessandro Duranti is Professor of Anthropology at UCLA (Los Angeles). He has put online lots of articles and papers and video clips. He is mainly interested in linguistic and political anthropology.

I was also pointed at these two papers:

Alessandro Cavalli and Fabio Luca Cavazza (2001): Reflections on political culture and the “Italian national character” (published in Daedalus, Summer 2001)

Franco Pelliccioni (1980): “Anthropology in Italy” (published in Human Organization, Journal of the Society for Applied Anthropology)

Earlier today, I’ve written about another Italian anthropologist Gabriele Marranci who runs the blog Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist.

Finally, there is the Italian online anthropology community Anthropos with news, links, forum and lots more – currently only in Italian, though.

There lots of anthropology sites in other languages as well (f.ex. Spanish/Portuguese), maybe a topic for another post?

If know more websites, leave a comment!

How can we create a more plural anthropological community?

Savage Minds: Is Anthropology Global?

New blog: Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist

Published on July 4, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Europe, politics, religion cosmology, Us and Them, websites

The Anthropology of Islam and Jihad Beyond Islam are the most recent books by Gabriele Marranci. In January this year he has started his own blog Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist. He is also writing for the excellent Middle East blog Tabsir.

Gabriele Marranci explains:

By nature, academic publications, even when attempting to reach the general public, are not very widely read outside the ivory tower of academia. (…)For this reason I also started, with Prof. Daniel Varisco, and regularly contribute to, Tabsir.

I believe that anthropologists, as Franz Boas and Margaret Mead have taught us, should engage and contribute to their time by facilitating debate.

In his recent post Collateral damage in the Wars on Terror: between Afghanistan and Glasgow, he comments on the public discourse and press coverage of the recent car bombings in Britain that were linked to al-Qaeda:

Yet are these attacks really al-Qaeda-sponsored? It is too early to say, but I have the impression that this series of attacks were the work of some ‘amateurs of terror’.

(…)

Prime Minister Gordon Brown misleads us when repeating ,

“It’s obvious that we have a group of people – not just in this country, but round the world – who’re prepared at any time to inflict what they want to be maximum damage on civilians, irrespective of the religion of these people who are killed or maimed are to be.”

It’s obvious, I would say, that this is not what those people want; this is, in this case, the inevitable ‘collateral damage’. This group of people kills because they want to achieve their idea of justice and good; they are fighting their battle against ‘evil’ to affirm ‘good’; they are ‘gifting’ us with a purifying fire which will be able to bring joy and prosperity in the future. They are gifting their victims with paradise, they are terrorising us for what they think is right, though costly to achieve. So they say.

Yet are we not terrorising, killing and maiming Afghan civilians to achieve what we think is the right cause? Have we not killed, possibly tortured, illegally detained (i.e. kidnapped), thousands of innocent people, or asked rogue Middle Eastern dictatorships to do so, to achieve what, paraphrasing Mr Brown, is in the interests of a perversion of our western democracy?

During these years of research with different Muslims, having different ideas and beliefs, I have reached the conclusion that we, the homely people of all colours, cultures, faiths and nationalities have found ourselves between not just one ‘War on Terror’ but two. And here is the issue: Terror fighting terror, the only result can be an endless chain of death.

>> visit Gabriele Marranci’s blog

Anthropologists on the Israel-Lebanon conflict

“Discuss politics!” – How anthropologists in Indonesia engage with the public

More and more anthropologists, but they’re absent from public debates – “Engaging Anthropology” (1)

Inuit language thrives in Greenland

Published on July 4, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Arctic / Northern Regions, inuit, language

In the 1960s and 1970s, elders in Greenland feared their language would be lost. Today, the vast majority of Greenlanders – 92 per cent – are fluent in their native tongue. Inuit language thrives in Greenland, Nunatsiaq News reports:

You can find a copy of Harry Potter, translated in Greenlandic, at the local library of Greenland’s capital. Also available are the translated works of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway. Fifty Greenlandic publications are produced each year, says Carl Christian Olsen, head of Greenland’s language secretariat and chair of the languages commission.

(…)

On the streets of Nuuk, Greenlandic is often spoken by children, who all seem to carry cellphones. They send text messages to one another, in both abbreviated Danish and Greenlandic, shortening words like qujanaq, or thank you, to qujan.

(…)

Beyond books, Greenlandic is practiced in a lively music scene, ranging from soulful Greenlandic folk tunes to jazz to gangsta rap

In Canadian Nunavut on the other hand, the situation is quite different and according to Nunatsiaq News, some in Nunavut fear that Inuktitut, and related dialects like Inuinaqtun, are dying. Inuit language has been treated differently in Greenland and Canada:

While Inuit in Nunavut were punished for speaking Inuktitut in residential schools, Greenland has a long history of teaching Greenlandic in schools, since the early 20th century.

It’s also a consequence of having those missionaries decide that the language ought to be written with standard Roman orthography, rather than the more-difficult-to-reproduce syllabic system popularized by missionaries in Canada’s eastern Arctic.

Having money to translate and print such books helps, too. Olsen says he’s disappointed that Canada, a country of “enlightened people,” doesn’t give Inuktitut the same sort of language funding that French receives as an official language

>> read the whole story in Nunatsiaq News

Nunatsiaq News also writes about Qikiqtani Inuit Association (QIA) that wants the Government of Nunavut bring in new laws that would give the Inuit language the same status within Nunavut that the French language enjoys in Quebec, see QIA wants language laws dumped, re-written.

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In the 1960s and 1970s, elders in Greenland feared their language would be lost. Today, the vast majority of Greenlanders - 92 per cent - are fluent in their native tongue. Inuit language thrives in Greenland, Nunatsiaq News reports:

You can…

Anthropology and tourism: Conference papers are online

Published on June 13, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, journal articles / papers, Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, tourism

Have they forgotten to password protect the papers? Last year, you needed a password to open the papers of the ASA conference Anthropology and Cosmopolitaism. This year’s papers are freely accessible to everybody- good news! A step towards Open Access Anthropology? Thinking through tourism was the topic of the annual conference by the Association of Social Anthropologist of the UK and Commonwealth (ASA).

The papers can be found in the sections Panels and Plenaries.

The Secret Society of Anthropologists

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Have they forgotten to password protect the papers? Last year, you needed a password to open the papers of the ASA conference Anthropology and Cosmopolitaism. This year's papers are freely accessible to everybody- good news! A step towards Open Access…

Six reasons for bad academic writing

Published on June 6, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, journal articles / papers, language, University / Academia

Sociologist Lars Laird Eriksen has written an interesting blog post about why academic texts often are so badly written. When academics try to write, it often becomes so full of jargon and it’s a turture for the reader. So why is this so?

Here’s his list:

1st reason for difficult language: Trying to sneak yourself to academic status.

2nd reason for difficult language: Not knowing exactly what you’re saying and hiding behind grand words.

3rd reason for difficult language: Being on a learning curve – still searching for the right words and images to convey your thoughts clearly. (The nice version of the 2nd reason…)

4th reason for difficult language: Common sense language is not specific enough.

5th reason for difficult language: Common sense language is too politicized.

6th reason for difficult language: Common sense language is what is being analysed.

Number 3 is the interesting one in his opinion:

It conveys to me that when an idea is better understood, it can be expressed more simply. This also explains why cutting-edge research often is difficult to read: No-one has thought these thoughts before, so we are still on the learning curve of making them easier to think and say.

Which reminds me: Sometimes a text is difficult to understand, even if it is written in plain language – it could be because it is saying something new and different, something requires the mind to change direction for a while and think differently.

His blog is bilingual (Norwegian / English). He also contributes to the blog Sosionautene (Norwegian only)

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