anthropology in the news | antropologi.info

“Visual Anthropology of Japan” and more new blogs

Published on March 5, 2008 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, fieldwork / methods, internet, Visual Anthropology, websites

Visual Anthropology of Japan” is the name of the blog by anthropologist Steven Fedorowicz (Kansai Gaidai University). All of his students in his class with the same name are required to blog. He links to more than a dozen student blogs.

He explains:

The blog was set up in the Fall of 2006 when I began teaching the class “Visual Anthropology of Japan” at Kansai Gaidai University in Hirakata City, Osaka, Japan. Originally it was set up as a place where links to student project blogs were posted. Every semester the class, blog and student projects have changed, evolved and hopefully improved.

The blog is done in the spirit of collaboration, discussion, dialogue, open text and open access. It is my hope that people will check out my students’ blogs, leave feedback and advice and take part in the dialogue of visual anthropology in Japan.

Students have various backgrounds (both international and Japanese students), interests, levels and experience in anthropology. Their common goal is to explore how to represent Japanese culture through visual means, and their individual blogs serve as the medium where they present their work. Visual Anthropology of Japan also includes resources, announcements, photo essays and other information that might be of interest to a wider audience.

His own blog has blog posts with titles as Globalization Visual Anthropology Photo Essay: Japan in Hawaii, and Can you do visual anthropology with your cell phone? and Visualizing Terror in Japan.

In his most recent post, he asks:

What do all the photos in this post have in common? At least part of the picture is blurry. And why? The Japanese people pictured here are deaf. That means part of their body is being used to communicate while I was attempting to photograph them. Japanese Sign Language entails more than movements of hands and arms – it uses the entire body.

>> visit the blog “Visual Anthropology of Japan

It is getting crowdy in my blog overview, the antropologi.info Anthropology newspaper, so I’ve removed some inactive blogs. Links to blogger-blogs are corrected.

On fieldwork: “Blogging sharpens the attention”

Paper by Erkan Saka: Blogging as a Research Tool for Ethnographic Fieldwork

New Ethnography: The Deaf People – A Forgotten Cultural Minority

Visual Anthropology of Japan" is the name of the blog by anthropologist Steven Fedorowicz (Kansai Gaidai University). All of his students in his class with the same name are required to blog. He links to more than a dozen student…

Plans to study anthropological online communities and Open Access movement

Published on February 26, 2008 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cyberanthropology, fieldwork / methods, internet, Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, technology, University / Academia, websites

Anthropology of anthropology: How do anthropologists form online communities? How are open access publishing and other developments that have sprung up online changing community boundaries? Soon, an anthropologist will do fieldwork among us online anthropologists. http://nodivide.wordpress.com/ is the address of the blog by anthropologist Owen Wiltshire, grad student at Concordia University, Montreal, where he writes:

I am interested in collaborative research methods, and the growth of anthropology online. (…) I’m particularly interested in open-access journals, and feel that opening up academic publishing is an enormously important step for anthropology.

(…)

Delving into the interesting colonial history of anthropology, and into discussions of globalization and neoliberal economic injustice, it’s pretty easy to see how it makes sense to make anthropological work freely available to the world that it studies.

In this way I’ll be exploring ways to study online communities – in this case communities of anthropologists. Its an exciting time for anthropology online. I’ve been following anthropology blogs for a year now, and its amazing how fast its growing. Its quite inspiring, and I think reflects a very vibrant community thats just itching to work (and fight) with each other!

So while my research proposal is extremely vague, and I’ve been made aware of this, I’m absolutely confident that the internet, blogs, and the desire to liberate anthropological knowledge from the world economy are fueling a change in anthropology, and that within this excitement I’ll find an interesting “field” of study.

In an email to me he tells that he’ll be handing in a proposal in April and hopefully be doing fieldwork over the summer. He has already been investigating the ways faculty at Concordia University use the internet in classroom, and is working on getting access to an anthropological journal to investigate the publishing world “face to face”.

Owen Wiltshire worked as a web developer for a number of years prior to studying anthropology: “I’ve always followed developments in open source – so I’m excited to see how similar developments work their way into academic culture”, he writes.

>> visit Owen Wiltshire’s blog “Just another anthro blog”

antropologi.info survey: Six anthropologists on Anthropology and Internet

“Focalizar o que é comum aos seres humanos” / Open Access Anthropology in Brasil

Published on February 26, 2008 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, journal articles / papers, Latin- and Central America, Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, websites

What do all humans have in common? My interview with anthropologist Christoph Antweiler in German about his book on cultural universalisms has been translated into Portuguese and will be published in the journal Revista ANTHROPOLÓGICAS. You can download the Portuguese translation here.

The text was translated by Peter Schröder, one of the editors of Revista ANTHROPOLÓGICAS. The journal is open access.

Open Access, he tells me, is supported by the Brazilian government. The best scientific journals are freely available on the Portal Scielo http://www.scielo.br Via the subject list, I found three more anthropology journals: Horizontes Antropológicos, Mana and Revista de Antropologia. Most of the articles are in Portuguese, only a few of them in English.

Already lots of publications in the open access anthropology repository Mana’o

Book and papers online: Working towards a global community of anthropologists

Professor lets students blog their field experiences: More than 20 new blogs online!

Published on February 22, 2008 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, internet, media, websites

Anthropology professor Joe Rubenstein has started an interesting project: Students in his course “Field Methods” are expected to blog their field experiences (it seems). Their research topic is teens and adolescence.

“The purpose of writing on our blogs is to keep each other and ourselves informed and up to date on what is going on for *Adolescent* field work project”, Danielle explains.

The students are about to meet their first informants. Take a look at the long list of student field blogs on Rubensteins blog (at the bottom of the left sidebar).

Lots of interesting posts in the professor’s blog as well, for example On Doing Fieldwork where he helps us organizing one’s thoughts for the Weblog methods reflections and lists some useful fieldwork websites.

On fieldwork: “Blogging sharpens the attention”

Paper by Erkan Saka: Blogging as a Research Tool for Ethnographic Fieldwork

“Knowledge of the bigger context is crucial for successful fieldwork”

antropologi.info survey: Six anthropologists on Anthropology and Internet

Anthropology professor Joe Rubenstein has started an interesting project: Students in his course "Field Methods" are expected to blog their field experiences (it seems). Their research topic is teens and adolescence.

"The purpose of writing on our blogs is to…

Museum Anthropology Review goes open access

Published on February 21, 2008 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, journal articles / papers, Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, University / Academia, websites

This morning, the journal Museum Anthropology Review was launched as an open access journal. The content that was published during 2007 (the journal’s first year) is now available in both HTML and PDF format – free for all readers all over the world.

Editor Jason Baird Jackson said that making scholarly work more easily and affordably accessible is especially important in fields like folklore and anthropology that are rooted in the study of local cultures worldwide:

“If, for instance, a scholar spends months documenting the work of an elderly woodcarver living in a small American town and then writes about what she learned in a peer-reviewed research article, I have an obligation as her editor to make it as easy as possible for the schoolchildren of that town — or the artist’s grandchildren — to gain access to her writing. Open access repositories and journals, in their varied forms, help make this possible.”

>> read the press release

>> more information on the Museum Anthropology Blog

>> website of the Museum Anthropology Review

UPDATE: Inside Higher Ed reports:

There are hundreds of scholarly journals published online, plenty of them free. But what makes Museum Anthropology Review’s launch notable is that it is being led by the same editor as the traditional journal, Museum Anthropology, using the exact same peer review system.

For years, the criticism of the free, online model has been that it would be impossible for it to replicate the quality control offered by traditional publishing. When online journal publishers have boasted of their quality control, print loyalists have said, in effect, “well maybe it’s good, but it can’t be as good as what we’re doing.”

To this subjective criticism, open access advocates can now point to someone who knows exactly what the standards are at both journals, as he’s leading them both.

>> read the whole article in Inside Higher Education

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Open Access News

This morning, the journal Museum Anthropology Review was launched as an open access journal. The content that was published during 2007 (the journal's first year) is now available in both HTML and PDF format - free for all readers all…