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Riddu Riddu Update: Nunavik rocks Norway

Published on July 26, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Arctic / Northern Regions, indigenous people / minorities, music, Saami

Nunatsiaq News

Nunavik performers had enthusiastic audiences at last week’s Riddu Riddu festival in Arctic Norway, where attendance at the circumpolar arts, music and culture bash broke all previous records.

Some Sámi now consider Riddu Riddu to have more political importance than Norway’s Sámi Parliament or the Nordic Sámi Council. This year Sámi political leaders, including Sven Roald-Nystø, president of the Norwegian Sámi Parliament, and Ole-Henrik Magga, who heads the United Nations Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues, were both on hand to underline the festival’s importance to the North. >>continue

Nunatsiaq News

Nunavik performers had enthusiastic audiences at last week's Riddu Riddu festival in Arctic Norway, where attendance at the circumpolar arts, music and culture bash broke all previous records.

Some Sámi now consider Riddu Riddu to have more political importance than…

Anthropologist gets paid for hanging out in bars

Published on July 25, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, fieldwork / methods

Fast Company Magazine

Girl walks into a bar. Says to the bartender, “Give me a Diet Coke and a clear sight line to those guys drinking Miller Lite in the corner.” No joke. The “girl” is Emma Gilding, corporate ethnographer at Ogilvy & Mather, one of the world’s top advertising agencies. Her assignment is to hang out in bars across the country, watching guys knock back beers with their friends.

Since at least the mid-1990s, the advertising industry has been fighting a war on multiple fronts. Some larger firms believe that ethnographic research such as Gilding and Shapira’s can help identify consumers’ emotional hot buttons, allowing them to craft messages with more resonance.

But ethnographic research is not a panacea. For one thing, it’s expensive. The process is time-consuming. Paco Underhill, whose books Why We Buy and Call of the Mall are classics of modern retail ethnography, confesses to a bigger concern: How does this research translate into sales? >>continue

(via Ideas Bazar Blog)

Fast Company Magazine

Girl walks into a bar. Says to the bartender, "Give me a Diet Coke and a clear sight line to those guys drinking Miller Lite in the corner." No joke. The "girl" is Emma Gilding, corporate ethnographer at…

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

Published on July 24, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, culture traditions, interdisciplinary, journal articles / papers, persons and theories, Us and Them

Currents online, University of California

In an invited lead article in the current issue of the influential journal Human Development, UCSC psychology professor Per Gjerde challenges his colleagues to reconsider popular ideas about the role of culture in human development.

Much of the trouble stems from the use of nations as proxies for cultural units, said Gjerde. Notions of culture are linked to national boundaries and geographical areas, like “East” and “West,” fueling generalizations about “American individualism” and “Asian collectivism,” said Gjerde.

Gjerde is critical of the fieldwork that forms the basis for most notions of culture, saying it has been conducted in “limited and bounded social contexts” and that the fixation on groups has obscured the exploration of variation and complexity within and between human beings.

Gjerde’s model would take a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of culture, incorporating the writings of anthropology and other fields, and it would consider the influence of power, coercion, and class differences on individual psychological development. >>continue

Currents online, University of California

Much of…

Currently in Geneve: Meeting of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Population

Published on July 23, 2004 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, Native American

Main theme for the annual meeting is conflict resolution, the UNPO (Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation) writes.

A report was launched at the meeting in Geneva that states the potential for indigenous people to help curb the destruction of forests is being overlooked by the international community, according to a report, the BBC reports.

– The Guaraní community of Tentayapi, in southern Bolivia, one of the last bastions of the indigenous group’s traditional way of life, is fighting to keep a foreign oil company out of its ancestral territory. One of the community’s leaders, Saúl Carayury, told the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, meeting this week in Geneva, that Maxus Energy, a subsidiary of the Spanish-Argentine firm Repsol-YPF based in Spain, intends to explore and drill for hydrocarbons on communally-owned indigenous land in Tentayapi according to One World England

Main theme for the annual meeting is conflict resolution, the UNPO (Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation) writes.

A report was launched at the meeting in Geneva that states the potential for indigenous people to help curb the destruction of forests is…

San Update: Defying Ban, Kalahari Bushmen Return to Reserve

Published on July 23, 2004 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, San-bushmen

National Geographic

Botswana completed a multiyear process of relocating Bushmen outside the reserve. Xuxuri Johannes, a leader of the ragtag Bushmen’s rights group First People of the Kalahari claimed the move was designed to “create space” for diamond mining.

When I visited earlier this year, dozens of Bushmen had returned to the Kalahari to take up their old lives as hunter-gatherers in defiance of government edicts. Then, during a media tour orchestrated in March to show off the quality of life in the resettlement areas, reporters say they witnessed widespread hunger and more Bushmen streaming into the reserve. By late spring, the number of returnees was headed into the hundreds. >>continue

National Geographic

Botswana completed a multiyear process of relocating Bushmen outside the reserve. Xuxuri Johannes, a leader of the ragtag Bushmen's rights group First People of the Kalahari claimed the move was designed to "create space" for diamond mining.

When I visited…