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Media: High school sports more popular than academics

Published on October 8, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, media, University / Academia

A local news story that might say something more general about why anthropology isn’t more present in the news? The results of University research between April 1 and June 30 show high school athletes often get 4 to 8 times the media coverage of an academic all-star, Minnesota Daily reports.

“We’re not ignoring good stories; we’re not being told good stories,” Maureen McCarthy, Star Tribune education leader, said. “It’s unrealistic to expect two reporters to know what is going on in all area high schools.”

>> read the whole story in the Minnesota Daily

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

Why anthropology fails to arouse interest among the public – Engaging Anthropology (2)

A local news story that might say something more general about why anthropology isn't more present in the news? The results of University research between April 1 and June 30 show high school athletes often get 4 to 8 times…

How Islamic cassette sermons challenge the moral and political landscape of the Middle East

Published on October 4, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, media, Middle East, politics, religion cosmology, technology

The New York Times called it “Bin Laden’s Low-Tech Weapon”: Islamic cassette sermons are often associated with terrorism. They are rather a medium for democratic activism and ethical selv-improvement, anthropologist Charles Hirschkind argues in his new book “The Ethical Soundscape. Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics”.

There is an book excerpt on the website of Columbia University Press. Hirschkind writes:

To read the cassette sermon primarily as a technology of fundamentalism and militancy reduces the enormous complexity of the lifeworld enabled by this medium, forcing it to fit into the narrow confines of a language of threat, fear, rejection, and irrationality.

On the contrary, cassette sermons frequently articulate a fierce critique of the nationalist project, with its attendant lack of democracy and accountability among the ruling elites of the Muslim world. The form of public discourse within which this critique takes place, however, is not oriented toward militant political action or the overthrow of the state. Rather, such political commentary gives direction to a normative ethical project centered upon questions of social responsibility, pious comportment, and devotional practice.

(…)

For those who participate in the movement, the moral and political direction of contemporary Muslim societies cannot be left to politicians, religious scholars, or militant activists but must be decided upon and enacted collectively by ordinary Muslims in the course of their normal daily activities.

These sermons are a key element in the technological scaffolding of what is called the Islamic Revival (al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya), he writes. The cassette sermon has become an omnipresent background of daily urban life in most Middle Eastern cities:

In Cairo, where I spent a year and a half exploring this common media practice, cassette-recorded sermons of popular Muslim preachers, or khutaba’ (sing. khatib), have become a ubiquitous part of the contemporary social landscape. The sermons of well-known orators spill into the street from loudspeakers in cafes, the shops of tailors and butchers, the workshops of mechanics and TV repairmen; they accompany passengers in taxis, mini-buses, and most forms of public transportation; they resonate from behind the walls of apartment complexes, where men and women listen alone in the privacy of their homes after returning home from the factory, while doing housework, or together with acquaintances from school or office, invited to hear the latest sermon from a favorite preacher.

During his stay in Egypt, he spent much of his time meeting both with the khutaba’ who produced sermon tapes and with young people who listened to them on a regular basis.

One of the central arguments of his book is, he writes, “that the affects and sensibilities honed through popular media practices such as listening to cassette sermons are as infrastructural to politics and public reason as are markets, associations, formal institutions, and information networks.”

>> read the whole book excerpt

Charles Hirschkind: What is Political Islam? (Middle East Report)

Charles Hirschkind: The Betrayal of Lebanon (tabsir, 1.8.06)

The New York Times called it "Bin Laden's Low-Tech Weapon": Islamic cassette sermons are often associated with terrorism. They are rather a medium for democratic activism and ethical selv-improvement, anthropologist Charles Hirschkind argues in his new book "The Ethical Soundscape.…

Now online: EASA-conference papers on media anthropology

Published on September 27, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cyberanthropology, internet, journal articles / papers, media

(via Xirdalium) Understanding Media Practices was the name of one of the numerous workshops at the conference Europe and the World by the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA).

Some papers are now freely available:

The online nomads of cyberia (PDF, 337 Kb)
Alexander Knorr (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen)

Foreign correspondents/ foreign news production (PDF, 260 Kb)
Angela Dressler (University of Bremen)

Game pleasures and media practices (PDF, 160 Kb)
Elisenda Ardèvol, Antoni Roig, Gemma San Cornelio, Ruth Pagès and Pau Alsina (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

Finding our subject: media practice, structure and communication (PDF, 240 Kb)
Daniel Taghioff (School of Oriental and African Studies)

Introduction to “Media Worlds”: Media an important field for anthropology

Working papers in Media Anthropology

(via Xirdalium) Understanding Media Practices was the name of one of the numerous workshops at the conference Europe and the World by the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA).

Some papers are now freely available:

The online nomads of cyberia (PDF,…

Is this anthropology? African pygmies observe Britains in TV-show

Published on August 26, 2006 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, media, Us and Them

TV-shows about people from remote places (the producers use the term “tribes”) seem to have become quite popular. In a German TV-show, German families are sent into the African bush to live with “African tribes”. Now, in Britain a new TV-show called “Reverse Anthropology” is in the making according to the BBC:

Reverse Anthropology aims to turn the traditional formula – where a UK film-maker experiences life with distant tribes – on its head. Members of a tribe of pygmies will take part in a British hunting expedition and report back on their experiences. Channel 4 deputy head of documentaries Simon Dickson said: “It’s about time we turned the mirror on ourselves.”

“While we’re often baffled and amused by the customs of communities on the other side of the globe, this series will show that some of our rituals – the gym, queuing, getting drunk on a Friday night, golf, showing a lack of respect to our elders – look pretty peculiar to outsiders too,” he added.

C21 MediaNet even writes: “Channel 4 flips with anthropology”.

We may wonder: What has this to do with anthropology? And does it remind us on something? But as commentators on the Livejournal Anthropologist Community write:

On the one hand, this seems like another terrible and exploitative stunt in a long line of such TV programs. However, on the other hand, it presents a very interesting exercise in viewing our world through the eyes of those whom we usually study. (…) And, considering how connected the world is today, will they really be that shocked by what they see?

(…)

I think it might be the best damn cure for ethnocentrism the unwashed masses may ever recieve. And a highly amusing foreign vacation for the islanders, which is not to be sneezed at.

(…)

I initially had a knee-jerk reaction that this was exploitive, but then I considered that if it is done tastefully, it might be alirght.

Maybe Channel 4 is more tasteful than the private German TV channel SAT1? Their show is called “Like the savages” (!) (Wie die Wilden) and on their website you can click on “the families” and “the tribes”, and these texts are quite revealing. The message is: “These tribes do consist of real savages!” Each presentation has chapters on hygiene, rituals, men and women.

We learn these details about the Mentawai (Indonesia):

armed with bow and arrow, they are representatives of a lost past
they have sex in the hen-house
you’re not allowed to fart inside the house
they eat what their dogs have peed on

We learn about the Himas (Namibia, former German colony):

Women aren’t allowed to wash themselves
Their toothbrushes consist of a chewed off branchlet

We are not provided such details about hygiene and sexual life when you click on “the families”.

At the German excellent blog Riemer-o-rama there is a link to an interesting related article called Talking about “Tribe”. Moving from Stereotypes to Analysis:

For most people in Western countries, Africa immediately calls up the word “tribe.” The idea of tribe is ingrained, powerful, and expected. Few readers question a news story describing an African individual as a tribesman or tribeswoman, or the depiction of an African’s motives as tribal.

(…)

Yet today most scholars who study African states and societies–both African and non-African–agree that the idea of tribe promotes misleading stereotypes. The term “tribe” has no consistent meaning. It carries misleading historical and cultural assumptions. It blocks accurate views of African realities. At best, any interpretation of African events that relies on the idea of tribe contributes no understanding of specific issues in specific countries. At worst, it perpetuates the idea that African identities and conflicts are in some way more “primitive” than those in other parts of the world. Such misunderstanding may lead to disastrously inappropriate policies.

In this paper we argue that anyone concerned with truth and accuracy should avoid the term “tribe” in characterizing African ethnic groups or cultures.

In this paper, they argue that:

Tribe has no coherent meaning.
Tribe promotes a myth of primitive African timelessness, obscuring history and change.
In the modern West, tribe often implies primitive savagery.
Images of timelessness and savagery hide the modern character of African ethnicity, including ethnic conflict.
Tribe reflects once widespread but outdated 19th century social theory
Tribe became a cornerstone idea for European colonial rule in Africa.

In the US, the TV show Survivors plans to divide teams based on “race”. James Pritchett, professor of anthropology said: “This program is drumming up every old stereotype, and I don’t think it is going to be useful at all. What next, a show pitting Jews and Muslims and Christians against each other?”

In Detroit and London: More African Villages in the Zoo

Our obsession with the notion of the primitive society

Ancient People: We are All Modern Now

Primitive Racism: Reuters about “the world’s most primitive tribes”

TV-shows about people from remote places (the producers use the term "tribes") seem to have become quite popular. In a German TV-show, German families are sent into the African bush to live with "African tribes". Now, in Britain a new…

The Birth of a Cyberethnographer: The MU5 is to Blame

Published on May 25, 2006 by Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, cyberanthropology, GUEST BLOGGING, internet, media, technology

In 1974, fascinated, I pressed my nose to the window at UMIST and watched huge tapes turning on large metal boxes that filled the ground floor of the building – yes – it was that big! Operators and programmers were hurrying around wearing white lab coats, anti-static caps and shoe covers. My awed guide informed me in hushed tones of the need for a dust-free, climate controlled environment. It was a computer (I believe it was the MU5).

Twenty four years later I had one of my own, albeit slightly smaller, sitting on a table in the corner of my living room at home. What’s more it was connected to the Internet. I was still fascinated, I could go anywhere in the world and speak to anyone in the world. I had to know more: who was out there; what were they doing; why were they doing it and how. So I turned up in the Anthropology Department at the University of Hull in September 1998 and announced that I was going to do an ethnography of the Internet. Little wonder then that they didn’t quite know what to do with me!

Academic works on the subject were pretty thin on the ground, and the approach was mainly that the Internet would revolutionise social relationships. Turkle (1995 Life On The Screen) and Stone (1991 Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?) both wrote extensively about how the perceived anonymity provided by Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) would allow people to explore alternative aspects of their identity and of themselves like never before. Even Benedikt (1991 Cyberspace: First Steps) and Rheingold’s (1991 Virtual Reality) early assessments of the revolutionary nature of the Internet led them to believe that it would bring about immense transformations in social life. However, the text that influenced my own work the most was Markham’s 1998 book Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space.

At the time I wrote for the RCCS:

The focus of Annette Markham’s book, Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space, is the “lived experience of what it means to go and be online” (18). It constitutes a useful resource for students who like Markham find the writing of online ethnography “more slippery than I ever imagined” (19). Whilst acknowledging the fragmentation of a field that is experienced ‘more by individuals that by collectives,’ she succeeds in constructing an account that combines scholarly text and narratives into a reflexive ethnography that is eminently readable, both as a scholar and as an Internet user. Although the format of the book is laid out in chapters, Markham adopts the strategy of weaving Interludes into her narrative. These Interludes not only allow the reader to engage with her thoughts as she confronts the interplay of our fundamental, constructing relationships in both the real and the Virtual worlds. Interjected into the narrative are smaller parcels of text that represent her lived experience of her research enabling the reader to understand what she was thinking and feeling at the time. Both strategies act as signposts on the journey to discover how users make sense of their experiences in computer-mediated contexts. Along the way she asks new questions about the issues of self, identity, and embodiment that illustrate how her understanding of these concepts shifts and develops along the journey. Indeed, the notions of shifting contexts, shifting reality, and changing perspectives are dominant themes as the project progresses.

I loved the book (and still do) – it was one of a series of ethnographic alternatives – I almost ran around the department shouting ‘look! see! A real ethnography! I am not the only one!’ It is still the first text that I advise anyone to read, both inside and outside of academia.

Join me over the next few weeks as a guest blogger here as I chart the changes in perspectives that have informed both my own work and anthropology as a discipline, and discuss the challenges currently facing anthropologists in cyberspace. The Internet has not changed anything. Instead we use the Internet to change the ways we do things.