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

Published on November 6, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, internet, journal articles / papers, Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, technology

Erkan Saka, one of the most active blogging anthropologists, has published his paper Blogging as a Research Tool for Ethnographic Fieldwork that he presented at the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers in Brisbane six weeks ago.

The paper is a good introduction into the topic. It was inspired by recent discussions on anthropology blogs.

His main points:

Blogging occupies an interesting place between the personal and the public. The moment one starts blogging, s/he becomes public.
Blogging brings immediate feedback; not only from the limited scholarly circles but from a wider public/audience which in turn exposes exposes the ethnographer to a much more effective issue of accountability.
Moreover, blogging urges to see motives in a more regular sense, thus creates a strong sense of regularity that forces the ethnographer to produce on a regular basis which in turn produces a constant appeal to narrate what would normally remain fragments of field notes.
Finally, blogging might be a remedy to the anxiety of being in ‘after the fact’ that is shared by many anthropologists. Blogging takes place in the present tense while actively engaging with ‘the fact’, with the emergent phenomena unlike the later edited institutionally accepted monographs most of which become outdated.

In this paper, Erkan Saka also compares blogging to traditional journalism and reviews relevant literature on blogging.

>> read the whole paper

UPDATE: An updated version of this paper was discussed in the Media Anthropology Network.

antropologi.info survey: Six anthropologists on Anthropology and Internet

Anthropologist Kerim Friedman: Welcome to the Blogsphere: Stop Yelling at the TV and Get Online!

More and more academics use blogs

Ethnographic study on bloggers in California & New York

Why blogging matters: Handbook for global bloggers is out

Anthropology Newspaper – Overview over blogging anthropologists (and some others)

Open Access: “The American Anthropological Association reminds me of the recording industry”

Published on November 5, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, University / Academia

(via Erkan’s Field Diary) “The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is starting to remind me of the recording industry and their rearguard actions against file-sharing and online dissemination in general”, Eric Kansa from Digging Digitally comments on a recent AAA-decision against open access anthropology.

After the AnthroSource Steering Committee has issued a public statement in support of open access to research articles on the internet, the commitee has been officially disbanded by the AAA according to Alex Golub at Savage Minds.

Eric Kansa writes:

This speaks volumes about how beholden this organization is toward failing and outmoded publication business models, models that hurt AAA members, universities, libraries, students, faculty, groups with limited financial resources, and the public.

(…)

Trying to horde anthropological research seems self-defeating. It seems that anthropology should do more to attract more people to its research. FRPAA, which would require government funded archives of paper drafts accepted for publication, would be a great way for anthropology to become better known to a larger community.
(…)
By opposing FRPAA, the AAA is also working against the dissemination of vital knowledge in other disciplines that directly impact health, conservation, and economic development. That makes this whole affair sordid, ironic, and even somewhat tragic, especially for a discipline that positions itself in advocacy on behalf of marginalized peoples and communities.

Changing the AAA, he writes, is going to require some grassroots organizing. He welcomes therefore the initiative by anthropological bloggers who want to discuss ways to push forward an Open Access agenda at the AAA meeting in San Jose.

Kerim Friedman: Open Source Anthropology

The Anthropologists – Last primitive tribe on earth? (Take a look at indigineuos people’s use of online communication as a mean of resistance and raising awareness.)

(via Erkan's Field Diary) "The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is starting to remind me of the recording industry and their rearguard actions against file-sharing and online dissemination in general", Eric Kansa from Digging Digitally comments on a recent AAA-decision…

“The Maori ethnopolitical movement threatens democracy”

Published on November 5, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, maori, Pacific Oceania, politics, Us and Them

“The ethnopolitical Maori-Pakeha movement in New Zealand is subverting democracy, erecting ethnic boundaries between Maori and non-Maori and promoting a cultural elite within Maoridom”, Elizabeth Rata claims. She has just published her second book, “Public Policy and Ethnicity, the Politics of Ethnic Boundary Making”. The book is written with 13 other academics, including anthropologists Jonathan Friedman and Alain Babadzan.

Her PhD was in the philosophy of education, her thesis was an investigation of Maori revival and retribalisation. In an interview with New Zealand Herald, she says:

My research threw up the opposite of what I thought I’d find – that retribalisation would serve the interests of social justice – so disproving my original argument.
(…)
Many New Zealanders originally supported Maori retribalism because they saw it as a means to much greater social justice – and my argument is that, in fact the opposite has happened – that group of poor marginalised Maori is in the same position now.

Rata discovered the emergence of “neotribal capitalism”: Once Maori people were given back assets, they behaved just like white New Zealanders. The aggressive and adventurous grabbed the spoils, she claims, while the rest remained as poor as ever. Although it might have been an unintended consequence, the Maori movement led according to her to an ethnification of politics and society. It led to the belief that ethnicity was our primary identity – more basic than any other identity we could choose. People were classified ethnically within mental health, education. Ethnicity was institutionalised at all levels.

But the biggest problem, says Rata, is that no one will talk about what is happening.

>> read the whole article in The New Zealand Herald

Rata has received lots of criticism for her views. In a Call for papers for the Journal of Indigenous Nations Studies we read:

Rata’s rhetoric bears a resemblance to global right wing conservative messages that promote the notion that when “traditional fundamentalists” succeed in intervening into western power structures they contaminate and weaken western democracy.
(…)
Through what amounts to unchecked media access, writers around the globe use their privileged positions to promote western bias and dogma, deepen colonial trauma, and undermine futures of Indigenous Peoples.

And the International Research Institute For Maori And Indigenous Education (Iri) And Te Aratiatia (Maori Education, The University Of Auckland states:

The recent attack by Elizabeth Rata on Kaupapa Maori developments highlights a disturbing trend of racism being disguised as public debate. Director of the International Research Institue for Maori and Indigenous Education, Dr Leonie Pihama, states that the comments by Elizabeth Rata where couched within an “almost unintelligible academic language” do in fact merely reflect the Don Brash position that Maori language and culture have little significance in this country.

I suppose one example of these racist attacks can be found in this article Gene linked to Maori violence

I’ve neglected Maori issues in this blog. For current news, see Waatea News Update by journalist Adam Gifford and for more links Wikipedia: Maori.

Stephen Webster: Maori hapuu and their history (Australian Journal of Anthropology, Dec 1997)

Judith Simon: Anthropology, ‘native schooling’ and Maori: The politics of ‘cultural adaptation’ policies (Oceania, Sep 1998)

Jeffrey Sissons: Anthropology, Maori tradition and colonial process
(Oceania Sep 1998)

"The ethnopolitical Maori-Pakeha movement in New Zealand is subverting democracy, erecting ethnic boundaries between Maori and non-Maori and promoting a cultural elite within Maoridom", Elizabeth Rata claims. She has just published her second book, "Public Policy and Ethnicity, the Politics…

Photography as research tool: More engaged Kurdish anthropology

Published on November 3, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, gender, Middle East, Visual Anthropology, youth

Visual anthropologist Kameel Ahmady has published several new articles at KurdishMedia.com. It looks like he is about to publish a whole book there. It started four weeks ago with part one of Media consumption, conformity and resistance: A visual ethnography of youth culture in Iranian Kurdistan, today we can read part five.

In part three, he tells us more about the way he uses photography to interact with his informants and discuss (tricky) gender issues:

Young women are particularly voiceless, and marginalised or excluded altogether from public spaces. Therefore, photography, and particularly the participatory methods which I incorporated with photography, became a way for the young people this research deals with to reflect on public space in a new way which they may not have done before.

It also was an alternate means of them expressing themselves which was less intimidating and more accessible than simply interviews, which they might not relate to. It gave girls especially a chance to participate in and narrate public space from which they feel excluded. The young adults were encouraged to develop their own themes from what they felt was relevant.

These pictures, taken by young people, have then been exhibited at the Town hall:

These images, about themes relating to community and public space, now on display in public space, revealed understandings of local culture – those of the children – which had previously been obscured from the adult dominated public domain. This allowed the viewers to see their surroundings in new ways, and therefore opened up dialogue between different segments of the population.

From the perspective of young people, the ‘ethnographic meanings’ of the photographs contribute to an understanding of youth culture in Mahabad, not only for me as the ethnographer, but for the wider community. Collier and Collier (1986) have referred to this approach as a specific fieldwork method, ‘photo-essays’: “When the photographic essay has been read by the native, it can become a meaningful and authentic part of the anthropologist’s field notes” (1986:108). Such was the experience of helping to organise and observing the exhibition.

For example, one attendee wrote in the Guest Book for the exhibition:

“This was very interesting. It showed me a different way of seeing the town; the streets we cross every day have a different meaning. It is interesting to see the different vision of Mahabad among the young people. For me, poverty is the thing that comes out most, how they view this theme”

Part four and part five provide more details about some photo essays.

And a few days ago, Kameel Ahmady wrote about the problems of representation at the Kurdish Cultural Heritage Project at a museum in London:

The very admirable idea behind this was to give Kurds in London a sense of belonging and a chance to express their identity, and to make people feel they have been given the chance to contribute to the wider multicultural society in practice. Through the course of this project, some of the community members realised that participation of Kurds was through only a small and select group, as the museum chose to work with one particular community centre and exclude the others. Therefore, even though the aims were good and worthwhile ones which for sure every Kurdish person would support, the vast majority were not given the opportunity to do this or in fact had any knowledge of the work at the Museum

>> overview over Kameel Ahmady’s texts at KurdishMedia.com

>> Kameel Ahmady’s homepage with image gallery and several papers

“We want children to be their own ethnographers”

Ethnographic Flickr

Photo Ethnography Blog by Karen Nakamura

Why borders don’t help – An engaged anthropology of the US-Mexican border

Published on October 31, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, globalisation, migration, Northern America, Us and Them, websites

“Anthropologists Should Participate in the Current Immigration Debate” was the title of an earlier entry. Josiah McC. Heyman is one of the engaged anthropologists. He wrote several newspaper articles about the US-Mexican border where he showed that more border enforcement will not deter people from coming to the United States, but rarther make them more likely to settle and less likely to return home.

In his op-ed The Border Control Illusion (MS Word document!)he writes:

What can we do when our current ideas don’t work? We can question our assumptions. In this case, the assumption is that BAD THINGS come from outside of the country and that WE inside the U.S. have nothing to do with them. The border could be a safe protective wall that keeps all danger away, if we could just make it big, tall, and tough enough.

(…) Migration is woven into the interior of the United States. It is part of the construction, agriculture, and services we all use, directly and indirectly. It is part of family reunification and community consolidation. Migration cannot be stopped by the border because it is already on the inside–not just the immigrants living among us, but part and parcel of our own culture and economy. We must think differently, very differently.

>> visit his homepage (incl. several articles)

Elsewhere on the web:

Josiah McC. Heyman: Class and classification at the U.S.-Mexico border (Human Organization, summer 2001 / FindArticles.com)

Josiah McC. Heyman: The Anthropology of Power-Wielding Bureaucracies (Human Organization, winter 2004 / FindArticles.com)

Visual anthropology: Documenting the economic exodus from Mexico

Ethnographic Research: Gated Communities Don’t Lead to Security

For free migration: Open the borders!

"Anthropologists Should Participate in the Current Immigration Debate" was the title of an earlier entry. Josiah McC. Heyman is one of the engaged anthropologists. He wrote several newspaper articles about the US-Mexican border where he showed that more border enforcement…