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Christopher Kaplonski’s website on Anthropology of Mongolia

Published on August 19, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Asia, fieldwork / methods, politics, websites

You can download several articles and papers on Anthropology of Mongolia on Christopher Kaplonski’s website. He is currently doing research on concepts of democracy in Mongolia and political Violence and its legacy.

He writes:

Among other things, I have looked at how different political parties confronted the issue of rehabilitation and compensation for the victims of political repression. Exactly who is a victim and who is not a victim raises important questions about identity and politics. Given the importance of this category to work on human rights, reconciliation, truth commissions and memory studies, it intrigues and puzzles me that it has been left almost completely unexamined in existing research. I thus see an integral part of this larger project on political violence being the problematization of the label of “victim.”

(…)

It is very interesting and important to me that any discussion of the concept of democracy that I’ve read in Mongolian explains the concept in terms of its Greek origins and Western theories. As an anthropologist, I’m pretty convinced that this is not the most useful approach. Rather, I think it is important not to just to look at how people respond to surveys, or understand European and American political theory but how they actually talk and act in different situations. My current thinking is that in many ways, the textbook definition of democracy is irrelevant in the daily life of people. People seem to be thinking of democracy as a form of ‘anti-socialism.’

>> read more on his website

The layout is clean and friendly, but the navigation is quite confusing. Here some shortcuts:

>> conference papers to download

>> more articles to download

>> section about Mongolia incl lots of pictures

>> his general section on anthropology, fieldwork and data-analysis

You can download several articles and papers on Anthropology of Mongolia on Christopher Kaplonski's website. He is currently doing research on concepts of democracy in Mongolia and political Violence and its legacy.

He writes:

Among other things, I have looked…

Researching Gossip

Published on August 16, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, Us and Them

Interesting article in the International Herald’s Tribune on recent research on Gossip. If there’s a list of universal human traits, gossip must be part of it:

“Long-term studies of Pacific Islanders, American middle-school children and residents of rural Newfoundland and Mexico, among others, have confirmed that the content and frequency of gossip are universal: People devote anywhere from a fifth to two-thirds or more of their daily conversation to gossip, and men appear to be just as eager for it as women.”

“Gossip has long been dismissed by researchers as little more than background noise, self-serving blather that serves no useful function”, the article tells us. “But some investigators now say that it belongs front and center in any study of group interaction” – among them an anthropologist (Kevin Kniffin) who has studied gossip among a university crew group for more than 18 months. >> read the whole story

PS: I remember vaguely that anthropologists have already conducted several other studies on gossip. See among others Kate Fox: Mobile(phone) Gossip

Interesting article in the International Herald's Tribune on recent research on Gossip. If there's a list of universal human traits, gossip must be part of it:

"Long-term studies of Pacific Islanders, American middle-school children and residents of rural Newfoundland and Mexico,…

To provide better services at the library: Another anthropologist is studying college students

Published on August 10, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, design anthropology, fieldwork / methods, technology, University / Academia

“Rebekah Nathan” isn’t the only anthropologist who is studying students.

The article in Democrat & Chronicle starts like this (quite typically for journalists who are somehow puzzeled by recent changes in anthropology)

On and off for two years, anthropologist Nancy Foster lived with and observed the Wapishana, an indigenous tribe in Guyana and northern Brazil whose members live as hunters, farmers and fishermen. Now she’s studying a group nearly as exotic — college students.

And it goes on:

Employing the same methods numerous companies use to study their workers, University of Rochester’s River Campus library system is dissecting how its students live and work. The goal is to figure out ways of making the library more accessible to them for research papers and other projects.

The work comes on the heels of a similar study led by Foster of UR faculty to see how they used the library, particularly its online offerings. The result was that UR faculty now have personalized pages on the library’s UR Research Web site — it being a repository of various studies and papers done by faculty.

PS: We read about the possible consequences of this research. Students might be able to send an instant message to a reference librarian with questions. Something similar is already possible at the public library in Oslo. You can send sms and chat with librarians, see here

www.biblioteksvar.no/en/

"Rebekah Nathan" isn't the only anthropologist who is studying students.

The article in Democrat & Chronicle starts like this (quite typically for journalists who are somehow puzzeled by recent changes in anthropology)

On and off for two years, anthropologist Nancy Foster…

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…

Understanding the ‘Natives’ at a Big University: Anthropologist studies students

Published on August 4, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ethics, fieldwork / methods, University / Academia, youth

Gil Klein, Media General News Service

WASHINGTON – When most anthropologists do field work, they head off to places like Indonesia to study such things as 20th century head-hunting rituals. But when Rebekah Nathan wanted to study a foreign culture, she turned in her faculty parking pass, enrolled at her own university as a freshman and moved into a dorm.

“I had to learn a new language, a new speed of talk,” Nathan said. “Much quicker, much more shorthand. It comes from IM-ing (instant messaging). Even the number of “likes” in a sentence marked my age. I had to put a lot more in … so I talk like I know how he was like …”

Rebekah Nathan is not the anthropologist’s real name. She’s not saying where she teaches and did her research — or even where she was during a telephone interview. Her methods have raised a buzz in the academic community even before the September release of her book, “My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student.” After an article and excerpt appeared in the “Chronicle of Higher Education,” she was criticized for involving students in her research without their “informed consent.” >> continue (Link updated)

Rebekah Nathan: An Anthropologist Goes Under Cover (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 29.7.05)

Undercover Freshman (Inside Higher Education, 13.7.05)

An anthropologist’s undercover project raises ethical hackles (The Boston Globe, 7.8.05)

Gil Klein, Media General News Service

WASHINGTON - When most anthropologists do field work, they head off to places like Indonesia to study such things as 20th century head-hunting rituals. But when Rebekah Nathan wanted to study a foreign culture, she…