anthropology in the news | antropologi.info

INTEL is hiring more than 100 anthropologists

Published on February 23, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, technology

LINKS UPDATED 19.4.2022

(via Gumsagumlao and anthropology.net ) It has become so commonplace to read about INTEL using anthropologists, that I’ve overlooked this news: INTEL in the process of hiring more than 100 anthropologists and other social scientists to work side by side with its engineers according to Technology Review.

The reason is simple: Anthropological research pays off – although Pat Gelsinger, a senior vice president at Intel, was sceptical in the beginning: “It’s much harder to justify and measure the qualitative research.”

Anthropologists had useful insights into a variety of emerging markets:

Intel viewed China and India as countries where people were simply too poor to buy its products — until anthropologists showed them that extended families in Asia will invest in a PC if it’s viewed as helping their children to succeed.

Intel has already released several products shaped by anthropological research:

In February 2005, it worked with a Chinese PC maker to release the China Home-Learning PC; and in October 2005 it launched the iCafe initiative in China, which involves a platform for improving how Internet café owners deploy and manage their technology. Intel has also repeatedly demonstrated early production versions of a Community PC, which is aimed at markets where infrastructure is not as well developed as in the West.

(…)

The rise of the anthropologists may come just in time for Intel. Its traditional Western markets are largely saturated, while many parts of the developing world use cell phones for e-mail and other forms of communication. And Intel’s efforts to gain share in the cell-phone market have not been strong. Thus, developing new approaches to potentially huge markets like India and China may help Intel grow faster in the future.

>> read the whole story at Technology Review

INTEL-ethnographers challenge our assumptions of the digital divide

Anthropologist helps Intel see the world through customers’ eyes

INTEL and Microsoft conference “a coming-out party” for ethnography

When cultures shape technology – Interview with INTEL-anthropologist Genevieve Bell

Research at INTEL

LINKS UPDATED 19.4.2022

(via Gumsagumlao and anthropology.net ) It has become so commonplace to read about INTEL using anthropologists, that I've overlooked this news: INTEL in the process of hiring more than 100 anthropologists and other social scientists to work…

Online: On the Margins – An Ethnography from the US-Mexican Border

Published on February 19, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news

The field: The city has 14312 inhabitants, more than half are unemployed, 53% of the under 18 years old are officially living under the poverty line. The main source of income for the town: Smuggling of people and drugs.

Social anthropologist Johannes Wilm has written an ethnography of the town Douglas in Arizona, a border town to Mexico. It builds on his master thesis at the University of Oslo. He looks “at the complex influence that the two involved countries have on individual actors and how community and identity are shaped thereof.”

The book has been published these days, it looks very interesting and written with the reader in mind. I’ll write more about it the coming days / weeks.

The whole book can be downloaded as pdf (30MB!)

UPDATE: SEE ALSO:

Too engaged anthropology? The Lumpenproletariat on the US-Mexican Border

Interviews on Euro-Islam and legal anthropology: When law crosses borders

Published on February 19, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, migration, persons and theories, religion cosmology, Us and Them

Two interviews that I’ve conducted for the research program “Cultural Complexity in the new Norway” have been translated into English:

Law and multiculturalism: When law crosses borders

How does multicultural society challenge the Norwegian legal system and our interpretation of the law? What happens when different conceptions of the law meet? Should all people be treated alike – regardless of background? Or should groups be given special treatment based on religion and/or ethnicity? Anne Hellum is one of the few jurists in Norway who combine law and anthropology.

>> read the interview

Islam in Europe: Mainstream society as the provider of conditions

– There are many different views on the relationship Islam has to human rights. But no one has investigated processes based on the believer’s needs, considers the historian of religion Lena Larsen. She will be investigating fatwas’ – Muslim legal decrees – interpretations of Sharia legal principles. The answers and bases for fatwas are a unique and as yet unused source of data for finding out what values are imparted by Islamic authorities.

>> read the interview

Two interviews that I've conducted for the research program "Cultural Complexity in the new Norway" have been translated into English:

Law and multiculturalism: When law crosses borders

How does multicultural society challenge the Norwegian legal system and our interpretation of the law?…

The Culture Struggle: How cultures are instruments of social power

Published on February 19, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, persons and theories

It seems that Michael Parenti has summarized many of our main points regarding culture and the culture concept in his new book “The Culture Struggle”. In an interview on ZNet, he says:

(…) it has long occurred to me that what we call “culture” is not just a set of practices, mores, and beliefs, the “innocent accretion of past solutions,” as an anthropologist once said. Much of culture is certainly that, but culture is also a politically charged component of the social order, mediated through institutions and groups that have quite privileged vested interests.

(…)

I draw from cultures from around the world in the hope of demonstrating how beliefs and practices are subjected to manipulation by dominant interests, and how cultures are instruments of social power.

>> read the whole interview

SEE ALSO:

Culture – a definition

On Savage Minds: Debate on the Construction of Indigenous Culture by Anthropologists

Emphasis on ‘culture’ in psychology fuels stereotypes, scholar says

Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Confessions of a useful idiot, or Why culture should be brought back in

It seems that Michael Parenti has summarized many of our main points regarding culture and the culture concept in his new book "The Culture Struggle". In an interview on ZNet, he says:

(...) it has long occurred to me that what…

Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge – conference papers in fulltext

Published on February 19, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, journal articles / papers, websites

For some reason, information on what is going on on anthropology conferences is difficult to obtain. Accidentally, I stumbled upon the website on a conference by the Association of Social Anthropologists on Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge that was held six years ago. Strangely enough, all papers are published in full text.

From the introduction:

Anthropology’s enduring interest in people’s knowledge systems has recently attracted the attention of development policymakers and practitioners. ‘Indigenous knowledge’ has emerged with the focus on popular participation and planning-from-below. It has opened up opportunities for anthropology to engage practically as never before. How might it further contribute to, and learn from this current burgeoning of interest, which has taken it somewhat by surprise?

>> overview over all papers

SEE ALSO:

“Aboriginal knowledge is science”

Who owns native culture?