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Anpere – New Open Access Anthropology Journal

anpere – Anthropological Perspectives on Religion is the name of a new journal that is freely available for everybody. It is edited by anthropologists Pierre Wiktorin and André Möller from Lund University (Sweden).

They explain:

The aim of anpere is to offer a flexible and relevant channel for researches as well as lay people interested in questions pertaining to the anthropology of religion.

anpere do not stick to the traditional way of publishing, as it will publish as soon as any text is ready to meet the public. This means that we may publish three articles a day or three articles per month, depending on the quality and quantity of the articles received.

In order to faciliate the life of our valued readers, we will gladly send you an e-mail each time a new article or review is added on the anpere site.

The articles are written both in Swedish and English. At the moment there are three papers in English:

Åse Piltz: Being Tibetan: Internet and Public Identity among Tibetan Youth

André Möller: Islam and Traweh Prayers in Java: Unity, Diversity and Cultural Smoothness

Jörgen Hellman: Entertainment and Circumcisions: Sisingaan Dancing in West Java

There are even lots of photos, among others related to Ramadan.

>> visit anpere – Anthropological Perspectives on Religion

By the way, one of the editors, André Möller, maintains an interesting Indonesian Islam Blog.

SEE ALSO:

Open Access to Indigenous Research in Norway

American Anthropological Association opposes Open Access to Journal Articles

antropologi.info’s special on Open Access Anthropology (multilingual)

Open Access Anthropology Website (wiki and blog)

anpere - Anthropological Perspectives on Religion is the name of a new journal that is freely available for everybody. It is edited by anthropologists Pierre Wiktorin and André Möller from Lund University (Sweden).

They explain:

The aim of anpere is to…

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Open Access to Indigenous Research in Norway

More and more theses in Norway are published in digital archives and are freely available in full text. In MUNIN – the digital library of the University in Tromsø (Northern Norway), you can download eight master theses in indigenous studies. They look very interesting, so here they are:

Sargylana Zhirkova: School on the “move”. A case study: Nomadic schooling of the indigenous Evenk children in the Republic of Sakha Yakutia (Russian Far East)
Abstract: It seems strange that in a modern time the indigenous people decided to return not only to their traditional culture but also to the type of schooling which was used by their parents. The first nomadic school in Russia was created in the 1930s and now this kind of school starts to work again in nomadic communities. I have decided to write about the nomadic school because education is an important aspect of life of the indigenous people: it opens doors for indigenous people. Today the nomadic school is a new educational institution for the indigenous nomadic children.

Abdul Hoque: Radio and indigenous peoples. The role of radio in the sustainable livelihoods of indigenous peoples: A case study of the Rakhaing and the Garo people in Bangladesh
Abstract: Radio has the strong role in the sustainable livelihood of indigenous people. Promoting the recognition and practice of mother language media, especially radio, has its distinctive role. (…) Rakhaing has no radio programme of their own. So their language and culture has no significant development, even diminishing day by day. Study findings showed that the Rakhaing feel them excluded from the world; and only a single programme in radio can give them a feeling of being a member of the world.

Gilbert Ansoglenang: Rural women and micro-credit schemes. Cases from the Lawra District of Ghana
Abstract: The study concluded that micro-credit schemes help reduce rural poverty and empower women. Despite the enhanced and visible roles assumed by these women due to the credit schemes, there were serious operational lapses. (…) In the light of this, inter alia, the study made the following recommendation towards the empowerment of women: an appreciable increase in the loans, prioritizing girl-child education, developing and encouraging the use of appropriate technology, and engendering the loan scheme or helping rural women side-by-side their men folk.

Priscilla Felicity De Wet: “Make our children proud of the heritage”
A case study of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic communities in SA with specific reference to the emerging Khoe and San indigenous peoples in the Republic of South Africa

Victoria Phiri: When knowledge is not power. The integration of traditional midwifery into the health system. The case study of a traditional midwife among the Toka of Zambia
Abstract: In this thesis, I argue that what the traditional midwife practices is knowledge. Based on the local experiences and traditions, this knowledge may be different from what is commonly called “western” knowledge.

Sundar Bhattarai: The bola or parma of the Newar in Manamaiju Village. The significance of a farm labor exchange system among indigenous peasants in Nepal
Abstract: The key queries of this study are: what does the bola system look like in the village; and, how are they maintaining it as a successful living practice when there is a liberal economic policy in front of them?

Ciren Yangzong: The household responsibility contract system and the question of grassland protection. A case study from the Chang Tang, northwest Tibet Autonomous Region
Abstract: I attempt to demonstrate how common property systems have traditionally served and benefited the Shenchen nomads, and how they have traditionally co-existed with the wildlife using this system. (…) I analyze how HRCS is working in my particular area; especially in the Chang Tang conservation area and whether it is having an effect on nomad’s culture and environment.

Abebe Gizachew Abate: Contested land rights. Oromo peasants struggle for livelihood in Ethiopia
Abstract: Based on the contemporary ethnographic and historical data from Oromia regional state of Ethiopia the study examines complex relationships and contradictory processes of the effects of resource based-development policies of the Ethiopian regimes on land rights related to Oromo peasant livelihoods, environment and development. (…) Analytically, a new ethnographic paradigm of approaching the notions of land rights, power and resistance that problematize custom as static culture vs. dynamic understanding of culture opens up a more dynamic, practical , contextual and relational understanding of ` rights`.

>> overview over all theses

>> information on the Master Degree in Indigenous Studies

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Already 76 signatures for more Open Access Anthropology

American Anthropological Association opposes Open Access to Journal Articles

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Open Access News

More and more theses in Norway are published in digital archives and are freely available in full text. In MUNIN - the digital library of the University in Tromsø (Northern Norway), you can download eight master theses in indigenous…

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

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.

SEE ALSO:

On fieldwork: “Blogging sharpens the attention”

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)

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. …

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New discoveries on the first Anthropology Blog Carnival

On the day of the one-year anniversary of Anthropology.net Kambiz Kamrani has launched the First Round of the Four Stone Hearth – The Anthropology Blog Carnival – a great initiative to promote anthropological blogging:

A blog carnival is a type of blog event. It is similar to a magazine, or a round-up, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule.

A blog carnival is a great opportunity to discover new blogs and good blog posts. Especially interesting Paul Wren’s blog Wannabe Anthropologist about medical anthropology.

He points to the new issue of PLoS Medicine on “Social Medicine in the 21st Century”. It features research articles and essays which examine the importance of considering the cultural and social effects on health and health care, he writes and adds “The Research Articles are going to keep me busy for a long time”. That’s correct. Much interesting to read, among others about the impact to Tuberculosis care in the aftermath of armed conflict, the connections between health and socioeconomic status in India, anthropology in the Clinic, an Ethnographic Study of the Social Context of Migrant Health in the United States etcetc.

Interesting also the Carl Feagans’ review of Katherine A. Dettwyler’s ethnography “Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa.”:

Too often, statistics and headlines dominate Western knowledge of the plights of the developing world, but Dettwyler is able to objectify the problems and present them with a perspective that allows her readers to understand some of the associated cultural problems.

And finally there is AlphaPsy, a daily review of cognitive anthropology that is written in English by a team of French cognitive scientists and anthropologists. They share with us a critique of the new Paris Musée du Quai Branly – a museum of exotic art, as the author of this blog post calls it. He adds:

I know I am not supposed to call it that; I know that it is all about anthropological science and respectful curiosity. But whatever the brochures might say, the spiritual father of the Musée du Quai Branly is not Claude Lévi-Strauss; it would rather be Guillaume Apollinaire, the poet who launched the “Art Nègre” fad in early twentieth-century Paris.
(…)
the concept of Otherness (…) is currently enjoying, among the French intelligentsia, a favour which, in my view, can only be explained by its utter lack of content.

>> visit the First Round of the Four Stone Hearth – The Anthropology Blog Carnival (with a lot more to explore!)

On the day of the one-year anniversary of Anthropology.net Kambiz Kamrani has launched the First Round of the Four Stone Hearth - The Anthropology Blog Carnival - a great initiative to promote anthropological blogging:

A blog carnival is a type…

Read more

Online: Thesis about Up-Country Tamil Students

“Their history deserves to be known in every other country where one can expect to be served a cup of Ceylon tea”, Norwegian anthropologist Haakon Aasprong writes in his thesis Making a Home Away from Home: On Up-country Tamil identity and social complexity at a Sri Lankan university that now is available online.

He has conducted field work among Up Country Tamils at the University of Peradeniya from January to August 2006. Up-country Tamils are descendents from workers sent from South India to Sri Lanka in the 19th and 20th centuries to work in coffee, tea and rubber plantations.

He writes:

There are a number of reasons why Up-country Tamils deserve anthropological attention. The people itself is a young one and an idea of a unique ethnic identity is still in the process of articulation. Their immigration to the island [Sri Lanka] began as late as in the 1830’s at which time they arrived as labour immigrants from South India.

Today, they are in many ways a “diaspora next-door” (Bass 2004:375) and in a difficult situation vis-à-vis their Sri Lankan contemporaries, who have tended to be suspicious of their true loyalties and treated them as tools of Indian imperialism. Their employment as plantation labour in the up- and midcountry has to a large degree isolated them from mainstream society and while they enjoyed citizenship and limited voting rights under British rule, they were, following Independence, disenfranchised and rendered stateless.

Confined to conditions of semi-slavery in the plantation sector, the Up-country Tamils have been lagging behind the national averages with regard to indicators of quality of life. They are, moreover, as the Pastor of the Peradeniya campus church explained to me, “a voiceless community,” or in anthropological terms “a muted group”, and have been largely ignored when not suspected of disloyalty.

(…)

The 15 CG Up-country Tamils I have followed are all among the first in their communities to obtain a university education. They are, in other words, treading new ground, relying on each other and their own decisions, in a place which is conceptually, if not physically, far removed from their home communities. It is their task to make of campus a home away from home.

>> download the thesis “Making a Home Away from Home: On Up-country Tamil identity and social complexity at a Sri Lankan university” (pdf – 5,6MB )

UPDATE: Just found that Haakon Aasprong has been blogging on Globen Cafe

SEE ALSO:

Wikipedia about Up Country Tamils

"Their history deserves to be known in every other country where one can expect to be served a cup of Ceylon tea", Norwegian anthropologist Haakon Aasprong writes in his thesis Making a Home Away from Home: On Up-country Tamil identity…

Read more