fieldwork / methods | antropologi.info

Fieldblogging from Namibia

Published on December 18, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, websites

Josué Tomasini Castro has started blogging impressions from his fieldwork among the Herero in Namibia. He is mainly interested in their culture and cosmology. Right now, he is establishing contacts and trying to learn the local language Otjiherero.

>> continue to Josué Tomasini Castro’s blog AnthroBoundaries

>>…

Virtual Armchair Anthropology: Trend Watching Fieldwork Online

Published on November 30, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, corporate & business anthropology, cyberanthropology, fieldwork / methods, internet

“I predict that we will slowly see the return of the “armchair anthropologists” Malinowski so famously dethroned.” The reason: “The web offers a tremendous, and ever growing database of lived experience”, Kerim Friedman wrote in an earlier post on Savage Minds. Via del.icio.us/anthropology I found the article “Visual Anthropology” by trendwatching.com. They list several tips on how to conduct online-fieldwork – anthropology light – to find out about peoples’life. From their introduction:

As consumers around the world pro-actively post, stream if not lead parts of their lives online, you (or your trend team) can now vicariously ‘live’ amongst them, at home, at work, out on the streets. From reading minute-by-minute online diaries or watching live webcam feeds, to diving into tens of millions of tagged pictures uploaded by Flickr-fueled members of GENERATION C in Mexico, Mauritius, Malaysia and dozens of other countries.

What’s so interesting about this feature are the large number of links to explore. In many cases, the photo sharing service flickr gives insight into peoples life. Or obscure sites like What’s in your fridge?

>> continue to Virtual Anthropology. An emerging consumer trend and related new business ideas

"I predict that we will slowly see the return of the “armchair anthropologists” Malinowski so famously dethroned." The reason: "The web offers a tremendous, and ever growing database of lived experience", Kerim Friedman wrote in an earlier post on Savage…

New issue of Durham Anthropology Journal online

Published on November 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, fieldwork / methods, journal articles / papers

Recently, the summer issue of Durham Anthropology Journal was published online. Here some articles:

Edward Croft (Aberdeen University):
Dutton Higher Status Behaviour and Status Ambiguity: A Discussion of Exaggerated Higher Status Identity at Oxford University

Croft did fieldwork at Oxford University focussing on the university’s largest evangelical group: the Christian Union:

Using Eidheim’s research into the Lapps of Northern Norway as a further example, the article will further argue that when a group is ambiguous about its status it will react by projecting an exaggerated version of the apparently higher status. The article will note, in this regard, that the experience of Oxford University is highly ‘liminal’ and ambiguous with regard to whether a student is a child or adult. Following this, it will be demonstrated that an exaggerated adult identity is found to a great extent amongst students at Oxford University.

>> read the whole article

Sue Cooper (University of Durham):
A Rite of Involvement?: Men’s transition to fatherhood

Men are striving to be involved with the process of pregnancy and childbirth and society – an ethnography amomg young fathers in times of social change:

The aim was to identify core values and beliefs regarding fatherhood that are being transmitted through some of the rituals that men participate in before and during pregnancy, labour and birth. Qualitative data was obtained from interviews with fathers-to-be throughout their partners’ pregnancy and after the birth of their child.

>> read the whole paper

Oranutt Narapruet (University of Durham):
Freedom from the Cage: A Second Chance for Mental Health Care in the Czech Republic?

On field research in the changing mental health care system in the Czech Republic:

Whenever I think of the Czech Republic, I always imagine how beautiful it is, but I guess we don’t see what really goes on behind that whole façade’. The question of `why?’ is a good one. Why had the government banned the use of `cage beds’ in its mental institutions? Why were `cage beds’ even allowed to exist in the first place? What were the real reasons behind the use of `cage beds’? What do mental health professionals and the wider public truly think, and hope for, now that the ban has been established? And, more importantly, what does the future hold for the Czech psychiatric system, its staff, the community, and the patients themselves?

>> read the whole paper

>> Overview over Durham Anthropology Journal
Volume 13(2)

Recently, the summer issue of Durham Anthropology Journal was published online. Here some articles:

Edward Croft (Aberdeen University):
Dutton Higher Status Behaviour and Status Ambiguity: A Discussion of Exaggerated Higher Status Identity at Oxford University

Croft did fieldwork at Oxford University focussing…

Fieldwork in Papua New Guinea: Who are the exotic others?

Published on November 6, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ecology nature, fieldwork / methods, indigenous people / minorities, Pacific Oceania

A recent post by Alex Golub on Savage Minds is interesting for several reasons: Even a scientific project on a very narrow topic might suddenly be relevant for a wider audience. Golub has studied the relationship between indigenous people in Papua New Guinea and the white senior management of a gold mine. He writes:

I’ve been really amazed to see the New York Times’s series on the impact of gold mining that has been running recently—suddenly my area of expertise is literally news.

Furthermore, Golub reminds us that – when doing fieldwork, it’s not always clear who “the exotic other” actually is. In Golub’s case it’s not the indigenous people, but the white mining employees, although, as he writes “mine management were supposedly ‘from my culture.’”:

Learning to like and respect these men (they were almost entirely men) was one of the hardest parts of my fieldwork. They were mostly Australian and Canadian, and had the usual Commonwealth suspicion of Yankees. I was an artist and an intellectual, and over-educated to boot. And they were MEN in a way that I was not—they talked about rugby and worked with their hands and had pictures of naked (or nearly naked) women on their walls, in there calendars, on their screen savers. And, of course, in the struggle between landowners and company, I was sympathetic to my indigenous hosts.

Golub also draws our attention to the consequences of our consumption of metals:

It is commonplace these days for people who drive cars to lament the way they are destroying the environment. Very few people realize what the set of silverware in their kitchen cupboard makes then an accessory to. (…) Look up from your computer screen for a moment and look around the room—how much metal do you see? Imagine the copper wires and metal pipes and lines of nails that stretch around you for thousands of miles. Where did they come from?

>> read the whole post on Savage Minds

Anthropology of Trash: An anthropologist as garbage collector

Published on November 3, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, Northern America

After two years of persuading New York City officials, anthropologist Robin Nagle began her job as garbage collector. She has many concerns about garbage, but she is most concerned about trash collectors, she told the student newspaper The Brown and White: What is it like to wear the uniform? How are you treated when you are in that field in New York City? Are you proud of it or ashamed of it?” She found that while working on the job, “You are very much invisible once you put on the uniform.” >> read the whole story

When she recently gave a series of talks, she wore garments she had plucked from the trash. She said:

The most important uniformed force on the streets of New York is sanitation. But when you look at literature on urban studies, urban anthropology, planning and things like that, there’s nothing about sanitation workers as a workforce, as a community, as a group of people with a civic identity.

>> read more in WasteAge

In her weeklong diary of her work as sanitation worker she writes:

Sanitation workers will learn to read a neighborhood more closely than the most sophisticated sociologist just by observing what it discards, but no one will care about their insights. In fact, no one will care much about them at all, and I want to shield them from this insult most of all.

The Anthropology of Trash – Nagle’s course materials