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The Anthropology Year 2005

Published on January 6, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, internal notes, websites

Here’s a try to sum up the anthropology year 2005 based on entries in this blog (in English). A look back might be useful especially if you are as disorganized as I am and tend to forget everything. This is a post in progress!

Among the most discussed topics last year we find the African village at the zoo in Augsburg in Southern Germany. Earlier last year, the tsunami disaster triggered similar debates on racism and colonialism.

Much debates arose on CIA sponsers anthropologists to gather sensitive information and related Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of Their Curious Relations. On Savage Minds, a post on Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs and Steel” and the reasons for differences in progress for different societies received 128 comments! Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber was fired from Yale and the research by an undercover anthropologist among her own students raised discussions on the ethics of fieldwork.

2005 can be characterized as the year anthropology finally became visible on the internet.

A large rage of new websites and blogs popped up as for example the group blog Savage Minds, Tad McIlwraith’s Field Notes, John Norvell’s initiative AnthroBlogs – a community of nine anthropologist-bloggers, Wolfgang Wohlwend’s blog Anthronaut, the relaunch of anthropology.net with lots of new bloggers and most recently the fieldwork blog Cicilie among the Parisians by Cicilie Fagerlid – to name a few. Furthermore, the question How can we create a more plural anthropological community? was raised.

Open access to research material is crucial here and this topic was widely discussed Although a survey by the American Anthropological Association revealed that there’s a minimal willingness to post one’s own work online, more and more papers do appear online. Kerim Friedman put his dissertation in Anthropology online before it was published as a book. The most recent Open Access initiative is the full text journal: Ecological and Environmental Anthropology at the University of Georgia.

Anthropologists have also been more visible in the media and managed to react when their knowledge was needed on the aftermath of the Katrina disaster. And within a short time, a new website was launched: Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. They showed how in this case applied anthropology becomes aid.

Earlier last year, Anthroscope – a new anthropological radio show was launched.

The engagement for “ways to advance a more relevant and public scholarship” was actually the rewarded when Luke Eric Lassiter received the Margaret Mead Anthropology Award for his Collaborative Ethnography.

Lots of articles appeared in newspapers on business anthropology, so that Grant McCracken asked: “Ethnography a Buzz Word in the Industry – Where is the Quality Control?”.

There have been lots of interesting studies, stories and books, among others the article Somali immigrants share New England’s small-town values or Stories of an African Bar Girl – “an ethnography done by an illiterate” or studies on gun enthusiasts.

Very useful: Alex Golub made a list on popular ethnographies.

Here on antropologi.info, a post on the Internet Gift Culture and on Thomas Hylland Eriksens book More and more anthropologists, but they’re absent from public debates – “Engaging Anthropology” the interview six anthropologists on anthropology and internet and a new anthropology search page and aggreagator anthropology newspaper received some attention while the new forum in English hasn’t been used at all (much activity on the German forum, though).

UPDATE:
2006 – The Year of Open Access Anthropology?

Here's a try to sum up the anthropology year 2005 based on entries in this blog (in English). A look back might be useful especially if you are as disorganized as I am and tend to forget everything. This is…

Updated anthropology search page

Published on January 6, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, internal notes, websites

Anthropology blog search is now integrated into the anthropology search site at www.antropologi.info/search, a few search options are added and corrected, the layout modified. >> take a look

Arctic refuge saved from oil drillers – Inuit divided

Published on December 22, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Arctic / Northern Regions, ecology nature, inuit

Good news (for environmentalists) before the Christmas New Year-break: There will be no oil drilling in the Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife reserve. Republicans have battled to allow drilling in the reserve for 25 years. Although they pledged to try again next year, the defeat was expected to remove the issue from the agenda for a decade, according to The Age.

The region is home to hundreds of polar bears, and tens of thousands of caribou and other animals. Interesting how the concept of beauty differs. Alaska’s 82-year-old senator Ted Stevens is quoted. The wildlife refuge was a “barren, frozen wasteland”, with “constant tundra, no trees, no beauty at all”.

>> read the whole story

Concerning oil drilling, the Inuit are divided as ethnic US Americans: Oil of course means money, therefore Nunatsiaq wrote some years ago: Alaskan Inuit support oil drilling in the ANWR.

In an Guardian article we meet Bruce Inglangasak, an Inupiat Inuit. He describes one of the consequences of the oil drilling in another Alaskan region – it’s smog:

“When the wind blows from the west, a yellow-brown smog goes right across the horizon. In the summer, when I go fishing, it burns my eyes. It’s not just the air. Every time it rains our fish get it and our whales get it. You can feel the difference when you hold the fish now. The flesh is not as firm as it once was.”

The article goes on, telling that the oilfields have not turned out to be the ecological showpieces the Inupiat were promised:

More oil was found than expected and the drilling rigs, roads and pipelines now dominate the landscape. There is an average of more than one toxic spill a day; 43,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxides are released into the air each year, more than in Washington DC.

Nevertheless, he is not against the drilling:

For all his unease about the contamination of his ancestral lands, Mr Inglangasak needs a job. He has an eight-year-old daughter, and hunting and fishing are not enough to keep her clothed, housed and educated.

Seems to be more a problem of capitalism!

>> read the whole Guardian-story: Oil clouds gather over Alaskan eden

The Arctic is changing. An environment at risk. By Mark Nuttall (TheArctic.is)

Zebedee Nungak: Arctic Christmas – The then and now (very nostalgic column in the Windspeaker about the commercialisation of Christmas)

Good news (for environmentalists) before the Christmas New Year-break: There will be no oil drilling in the Alaska's Arctic national wildlife reserve. Republicans have battled to allow drilling in the reserve for 25 years. Although they pledged to try again…

Native Rights Issues: Anthropologists under attack

Published on December 12, 2005 by lorenz Posted in aboriginees, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities

In Australia, anthropologists have been criticized for “conducting themselves as advocates for Aborigines instead of impartial experts”, the Australian writes. Because anthropologists frequently had long-term relationships with particular groups of Aborigines, their ability to give objective evidence was sometimes open to attack, Graeme Neate, president of the National Native Title Tribunal says.

Similar findings can be found in a report that was produced for the tribunal last year. It found there was “a certain form of entrenched amateurism” among anthropologists outside universities. “Some expert witnesses have been held to be manifestly advocates for the claimants”.

>> read the whole story (link updated)

UPDATE:

1. Comment by Tad McIlwraith:

It seems unreasonable to expect anthropologists not to feel empathy for the people they work with and, often, have lived with … but does that eliminate the possibility of objectivity? What about academics with long-term associations with the government? I suspect that the courts are not likely to reduce the value or credibility of their testimonies. Are we simply back to the problem of the power-relations inherent in land and title cases that rely on ’settler’ courts?

>> read Tads whole post: The Problem of Anthropologists as Advocates

2. Jamie writes:

Perhaps it was anthropological or scientific research that led the anthropologist to feel that advocacy was necessary in the first place!

>> continue

3. Kambiz Kamrani thinks:

Studying cultures and peoples cannot be done without the give and take of personalities, behaviors, beliefs; in my opinion… and that maybe one of the reasons why anthropology has not become the “universal intellectual discipline” that it has potential to be.

>> read the whole post

In Australia, anthropologists have been criticized for "conducting themselves as advocates for Aborigines instead of impartial experts", the Australian writes. Because anthropologists frequently had long-term relationships with particular groups of Aborigines, their ability to give objective evidence was sometimes…

AAA: “Expanding willingness among anthropologists to listen to Native peoples”

Published on December 8, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, Native American

For decades, a stereotypical and frequently inaccurate mindset dominated the way anthropologists and museum curators treated Native Americans in research and exhibits. But several attendees on this year’s American Anthropological Association conference noted an expanding willingness in the field to pay attention to the voices of Native peoples in the development of new museum exhibitions and in the evolution of older ones, according Inside Higher Education.

Bruce Bernstein, the National Museum of the American Indian’s assistant director for cultural resources said: “I think that people are largely enlightened now,” said Bernstein. He recalled that while presenting similar ideas on American Indian voices within museums at an American Anthropological Association conference in the early 1990s, “the crowd was not pleased.”

He adds:

“If, as anthropologists, we’re really looking to work with people — to understand them better — then repatriation [of objects] is really the best thing that ever happened for museums. It puts them in one-to-one contact with the very people that they want to be in contact with and generate information about.”

Has the dialogue sometimes gone too far, Native Indians taken over the control? Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, president of the association, says why Indians still need anthropologists:

“There’s been a lot of dialogue by Native Americans, asking ‘Why do we need anthropologists to speak for us? We can speak for ourselves,’. I think that’s a legitimate question, but I think there’s an answer to it. Nobody — including anthropologists — see themselves objectively. People benefit from dialoguing with an outsiders point of view. If anthropologists are outsiders, that’s also good for Native people to be in dialogue with them. It’s also good for anthropologists.”

>> read the whole story