websites | antropologi.info

The BBC sponsors African blogs

Published on August 9, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, internet, websites

Ethan Zuckerman, Global Voices

The BBC has a long tradition of encouraging readers and listeners of their Africa service to talk about their views of the continent. BBC is going a step further, looking for people with interesting stories to tell, arming them with digital cameras and encouraging them to get posting. >> continue to Global Voices (many links to recommended blogs!)

>> go directly to BBCs “My Africa – Africa Diaries”

Ethan Zuckerman, Global Voices

The occational blog – New Anthropology Blog from Norway

Published on August 3, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, Visual Anthropology, websites

Norwegian Anthropologist Brigt Dale has started to blog in English – additionally to Norwegian. In his first post, he writes:

First of all, I will try to follow up on my motto for my Norwegian blog, and relentlessly attack and scrutinise all things which irritates me or puzzles me, but I will also comment upon spesific areas of interest like research politics (including the “bullitics” of our present government), visual and social anthropology (which happens to be my caling, if not my present occupation), as well as some personal rambling on films, music and litterature.

My hope is that this blog might join some of those excellent others which together constitute a Norwegian-based sphere in the international blogging-community (if such a singular entity exists).

As he is a “big fan of accessabillity when it comes to scientific work”, he has put online several texts, including his thesis, based on an anthropological fieldwork on the island of Tobago, West Indies.

As noted earlier here, you can watch his film Boys Will Be Boys online.

>> continue to “the occational blog”

Norwegian Anthropologist Brigt Dale has started to blog in English - additionally to Norwegian. In his first post, he writes:

First of all, I will try to follow up on my motto for my Norwegian blog, and relentlessly attack and…

Ethnomusicologist uses website as an extension of the book

Published on June 14, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, fieldwork / methods, internet, music, websites

(via Fieldnotes): Ethnomusicologist Aaron Fox has set up a website and blog as an “extension of the book”: “I’m not going to republish the book on the site, but the book deals so much with sound that I had to make it possible for people to hear the music”, he explains and adds: “I also really wanted to be able to interact with readers — as we are doing now! Seems to me this is just the most under-used capacity of the web as an adjunct to traditional publishing. It’s not like academic books sell in the tens of thousands, so it seems perfectly reasonable and possible to enter into a real dialogue with serious readers.”

Anthropologist Tad McIlwraith on Fieldnotes comments: “I think about this in the context of my work with First Nations people and wonder if I could convince them to allow their actual voices to be found in files on my website. I think my work would be enhanced if they’d agree to that.”

Aaron Fox’ book is called Real County: Music and Language in Working Class Culture and is according to Tad McIlwraith “a fantastic ethnography”.

(via Fieldnotes): Ethnomusicologist Aaron Fox has set up a website and blog as an "extension of the book": "I'm not going to republish the book on the site, but the book deals so much with sound that I had to…

Introduction to Indigenous Peoples and How can blogging help my research?

Published on June 10, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, internet, websites

Savage Minds has recently pointed to the blog by the Anthropology librarian Cynthia Tysick, University at Buffalo, New York. She seems to be surfing alot and lists a lot of useful links. Some of her recent entries are Introduction to Indigenous Peoples and How can blogging help my research?

The Internet Gift Culture

Published on May 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, gift economy gift giving, internet, persons and theories, Us and Them, websites

Cultures of Exchange and Gift economies are traditional anthropological topics. Famous are the Kula exchange in Melanesia, the Potlatch in Northwestern America, the Moka and often cited books are among others Marcel Mauss: The Gift and Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.

Contrary to what many (esp. postmodernists) believe, modernisation and globalisation do not automatically lead to more individualism and “fluidity”. Internet and social software lead to the creation of new networks and to a revitalisation of cultures of exchange and gift economies.

As Judd Antin comments, Alireza Doostdar describes in his recent article “The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging” some of the ways that bloggers exchange links, trackbacks, and comments as a way of developing social networks and expanding blog readership.

Many of us know collaborative projects like the encyclopedia Wikipedia, photosharing at flickr and copyright based on sharing like Creative Commons. People help each other in online-forums and what should we all do without all the great freeware software, partly developed by the Open Source community?

One of the best places to stay informed on social software and networks is Dina Mehta’s Blog “Conversations with Dina”

There are many articles on internet gift economy.

Lars Risan: Open source movement is like things anthropologists have studied for a long time (Jill Walker)

Eduardo Navas: The Blogger as Producer. He reviews “The Hi-Tech Gift Economy” by Richard Barbrook who also has written “Giving is Receiving”

Steve McGookin: Politics, E-Mail And The Gift Economy (Forbes)

Eric Raymond: The Hacker Milieu as Gift Culture

Jem Matzan: The gift economy and free software (NewsForge) (updated link)

Howard Rheingold: The Internet and the Future of Money (see also Interview with Bernard Lietaer on complementary currencies and the Internet and info on LETS – local exchange trading systems)

David Zeitlyn: Gift economies and open source software: Anthropological reflections (pdf)

Eric Lease Morgan: Gift cultures, librarianship, and open source software development

Markus Giesler and Mali Pohlmann: The anthropology of file sharing: Consuming Napster as a Gift

First Monday – Internet Economics