Us and Them | antropologi.info

Ethnographic research on Friendster’s online communities

Published on October 26, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cyberanthropology, fieldwork / methods, internet, journal articles / papers, Us and Them

In her most recent post, Danah Boyd gives us a round-up of her publications on Friendster, a popular social networking service where she has conducted ethnographic research. Among others, she studied how people publicly perform their social relations online. Most of her papers are available as pdf-documents >> read Danah Boyd’s round-up

“No Pizza without Migrants”: Between the Politics of Identity and Transnationalism

Published on October 2, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cosmopolitanism, Europe, globalisation, journal articles / papers, migration, Us and Them

Why are there such different patterns of identity and community formation among second-generation migrants? A transnational perspective with focus on the migrants’ relationship to their (or their parents’) homeland is neccessary, argues anthropologist Susanne Wessendorf in her paper “No Pizza without Migrants: Between the Politics of Identity and Transnationalism: Second-Generation Italians in Switzerland”:

“Politics of identity, transnationalism and integration should not be regarded as mutually exclusive, but as complementary strategies or reactions of migrants to the challenges of and tensions between mobility and settlement”

Wessendorf has among others studied Italian migrants in Switzerland and their political Secondo movement that fights against the negative image ascribed to them (They designed and sold T-Shirts as a way to communicate their pride in being members of the second generation, and to show that even if you do not look like a foreigner, you might well be of immigrant origin).

Wessendorf critizes concepts which describe fragmented second-generation integration as simply ‘bicultural’, moving ‘between two cultures’:

“But these new spaces can neither simply be called ‘transnational social spaces’, she writes: They are clearly embedded in the political, economic and socio-cultural realities of the nation-state in which they emerge. Rather, they are counter-hegemonic attempts to deal with both a national legal system and, sometimes, the nostalgia for the homeland.”

>> read the whole paper

PS: This one of the Working Papers of the Center of Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford

Why are there such different patterns of identity and community formation among second-generation migrants? A transnational perspective with focus on the migrants' relationship to their (or their parents') homeland is neccessary, argues anthropologist Susanne Wessendorf in her paper "No…

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

Published on September 19, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ethics, history, indigenous people / minorities, Native American, Northern America, Us and Them, Visual Anthropology

Early visual anthropologists produced a form of salvage anthropology that uncoupled “traditional” society from any form of change, Patrick Harries (University of Cape Town), writes in an article on the the history of visual anthropology in South Africa. Although almost 100,000 workers from southern Mozambique were employed, not one photograph of a migrant worker appeared in anthropological monographs.

Kerim Friedman tells a similar story on Savage Minds. It’s about Edward S. Curtis’ huge collections of photographs, now digitalised by the Library of Congress.

Friedman quotes Pedro Ponce’s text on Curtis:

“In order to portray traditional customs and dress, Curtis — using techniques accepted by many anthropologists of his day — removed modern clothes and other signs of contemporary life from his pictures. A portrait of a Piegan lodge, for example, originally showed an alarm clock between two seated men. Curtis cut the clock out of the negative and included the retouched image in The North American Indian.”

In a comment, Nancy Leclerc writes about consequences for Indians today:

“Several anthropologists pointed out that the negative judgements of white settlers toward Aboriginals largely stemmed from their perception that members of the latter group were not living up to the ideals of the past, a past that was largely romanticised.”

>> read more on Savage Minds

Early visual anthropologists produced a form of salvage anthropology that uncoupled "traditional" society from any form of change, Patrick Harries (University of Cape Town), writes in an article on the the history of visual anthropology in South Africa. Although almost…

New issue of Pro Ethnologica: The Russian Speaking Minorities in Estonia and Latvia

Published on September 14, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, indigenous people / minorities, journal articles / papers, Us and Them

Pro Ethnologica is – as far as I know – the only anthropology journal that is published both on paper and is freely available on the web for all of us.

Their new volume is now online. The papers in their new volume were presented at a workshop in August 2005 on the Russian speaking minority in Estland and Latvia and deal among others about “How the Russians Turned into the Image of the “National Enemy” of the Estonians” on “Strategies of Identity Re-construction in Post-Soviet Estonia”, “Experience of Estonian-speaking Students from Fieldwork in Narva” and “Work as the Focus of Socialist Everyday Life”

>> to Pro Ethnologica 19: The Russian Speaking Minorities in Estonia and Latvia

Pro Ethnologica is - as far as I know - the only anthropology journal that is published both on paper and is freely available on the web for all of us.

Their new volume is now online. The papers in their…

American Ethnologist – New book reviews on Indian Resurgence in Brazil, Anthropology of Britain, Race and Transnationalism

Published on September 11, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, books, Europe, indigenous people / minorities, Latin- and Central America, migration, music, Native American, Northern America, Us and Them

The August reviews of the journal American Ethnologist are now online.

Among them we’ll find:

Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities. By: Kamari Maxine Clarke
Kamari Clarke is an Afro-Canadian who joins several African American anthropologists in examining how Africa and African heritage are understood by contemporary African American communities. Clarke exemplifies the best of 21st-century anthropology as she offers an insider’s sympathy without romanticism, step-back objectivity without arrogance. Clarke presents multisited research among “Yoruba” and Yoruba in South Carolina and Nigeria. >> continue

British Subjects: An Anthropology of Britain. Edited by Nigel Rapport
The articles address a wide range of topics, including the royal family (Anne Rowbottom), the London ballet (Helena Wulff), the postindustrial landscape of a former mining village (Andrew Dawson), British Quakers (Peter Collins), and Rapport’s own literarily inflected work on the worldview from a British village. The collection reflects a view of Britain as largely white, tranquil, and middle class >> continue

Racial Revolutions: Antiracism and Indian Resurgence in Brazil. By Jonathan W. Warren
Jonathan Warren examines the shift in which people who might once have claimed mixed-race status instead reconstruct themselves as “post-traditional” Indians. Simply because Warren explores qualitatively Brazil’s contemporary indigenous resurgence, Racial Revolutions is a must read. >> continue

Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship. By Nicholas De Genova and Anna Y. Ramos-Zayas
This book represents a unique collaboration between two anthropologists who did fieldwork separately in Chicago during the 1990s. >> continue

Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race. By Maureen Mahon
Right to Rock focuses on the Black Rock Coalition (BRC), founded in 1985 as a network of African American musicians “sick and tired of being sick and tired” from the frustration of racial segregation within the music industry. >> continue

>> all August 2005 book reviews

The August reviews of the journal American Ethnologist are now online.

Among them we'll find:

Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities. By: Kamari Maxine Clarke
Kamari Clarke is an Afro-Canadian who joins several African American anthropologists in…