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– Sosialantropologien begynner å likne mer på folkloristikken

Published on June 27, 2005 by lorenz Posted in antropologi allment, faghistorie, historie, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark

forskning.no

Sammenligning av julefeiring i Norge og Italia. Ekteskap mellom svarte og hvite. Identitetsskaping på Internett. Aktører i dagens bunadsbevegelse. Fantasirollespill. Folkloristikk er faget som ser virkeligheten som et produkt av fortellinger. For en folklorist eksisterer virkeligheten i den grad den fortelles. Navnet folkeminnevitenskap ble for femten år siden endret til folkloristikk. Nå i enda nyere tid har kvalitetsreformen slått faget sammen med søsterdisiplinen etnologi, under navnet kulturhistorie.

I motsetning til folkloristikk går sosialantropologi inn for å sammenligne kultur og samfunn. I senere år har forskere også tatt for seg vestlige forhold, og mindre enheter som bedrifter og institusjoner der. I tillegg kommer lokalsamfunn og spesielle sosiale miljøer. Faget begynner følgelig å likne mer på folkloristikken. >> les mer

PS: I artikkelen er det ført opp en del linker om folkloristikk og etnologi. Siden de ikke er klikkbare på forskning.no, lister jeg dem opp her:

www.uio.no/studier/program/kulturide/presentasjon/
www.hf.uio.no/ikos
www.kulturvern.no/NorskFolkeminnelag.html
http://studere.uib.no/?mode=show_page&link_id=405&toplink_id=284
www.hum.ku.dk/iae/etnologi/
www.antro.uu.se/
www.etnologi.su.se/
www.etn.lu.se/ETNHEM.HTM
http://www.novus.no
Tidsskrift for kulturforskning http://www.nordnytt.dk

forskning.no

Locating Bourdieu – Interview with anthropologist Deborah Reed-Danahay

Published on June 24, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, persons and theories

Interesting interview by Scott McLemee with anthropologist Deborah Reed-Danahay on her recent book Locating Bourdieu in the magazine “Inside Higher Education”. The book is according to Scott McLemee “a very good place for the new reader of Bourdieu to start”.

Reed-Danahay summarizes one of Bourdieu’s main points and compares France to the USA:

“Bourdieu believed that we are all constrained by our internalized dispositions (our habitus), deriving from the milieu in which we are socialized, which influence our world view, values, expectations for the future, and tastes. These attributes are part of the symbolic or cultural capital of a social group.

In a stratified society, a higher value is associated with the symbolic capital of members of the dominant sectors versus the less dominant and “controlled” sectors of society. So that people who go to museums and like abstract art, for instance, are expressing a form of symbolic capital that is more highly valued than that of someone who either rarely goes to museums or who doesn’t like abstract art.

The person feels that this is “just” a matter of taste, but this can have important consequences for children at school who have not been exposed to various forms of symbolic capital by their families.”

“His work on academia provided us with a method of inquiry to look at the symbolic capital associated with academic advancement and, although the specific register of this will be different in different national contexts, the process may be similar. Just as Bourdieu did in France, for example, one could study how it is that elite universities here “select” students and professors.”

>> to the interview in “Inside Higher Education”

Interesting interview by Scott McLemee with anthropologist Deborah Reed-Danahay on her recent book Locating Bourdieu in the magazine "Inside Higher Education". The book is according to Scott McLemee "a very good place for the new reader of Bourdieu to start".

Reed-Danahay…

Our obsession with the notion of the primitive society

Published on June 24, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Andaman & Nicobar societies, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, persons and theories, Us and Them

Quite regularily, newspapers report about so called “primitive peoples”. The newest example is the Reuters-story “Hunter-gatherers face extinction on Andaman island” where we read “how primitive tribesmen came out of the jungle armed with bows, arrows and spears, raided a village in the Middle Andaman island and looted tools, food, clothes, cash and jewellery” and the reporter asks if this is an “indication that the Jarawa hunter-gatherers remain untamed primitives — or a cry for help from man’s earliest ancestors, their forests and their lifestyle, their existence under threat as never before?”.

I’ve always wondered why Westerners are so obsessed with this notion of the primitive, with the notion of linear evolution where the so-called so called enlightened West reigns on the top. From an anthropological point of view one could explain this phenomenon like this: These so-called primitives are used by the West in order to construct a positive image of itself – the “primitives” play the same role as the so-called “Orient” – as shown by Edward Said in his classic “Orientalism”.

Or as Adam Kuper wrote in his book The Invention of Primitive Society: “Primitive society was the mirror image of modern society – or rather, primitive society as they imagined it inverted the characteristics of modern society as they saw it.”

This also applies to anthropologists as we know. Kuper writes:

“The anthropologists took this primitive society as their special subject, but in practice primitive society proved to be their own society (as they understood it) seen in a distorting mirror. For them modern society was defined above all by the territorial state, the monogamous family and private property. Primitive society therefor must have been nomadic, promiscuos and communist. (…) Primitive man was illogical and given to magic.”

UPDATE: See also Evamaria’s ramblings: As an anthropologist, Cameron Diaz’ travel show on MTV is pretty offensive to my sensibilities. ‘The life of the Massai has remained the same for the last 600 years.’ Ugh, that kind of remark makes my skin crawl! >> continue

Quite regularily, newspapers report about so called "primitive peoples". The newest example is the Reuters-story "Hunter-gatherers face extinction on Andaman island" where we read "how primitive tribesmen came out of the jungle armed with bows, arrows and spears, raided a…

Open Access Konferenz in Wien: Wissenschaftler für freien Zugang zu Wissen

Published on June 24, 2005 by lorenz Posted in "Open Access"- Ethnologie, Ethnologie allgemein, Ethnologie Sozialanthropologie Kulturanthropologie

“Seit einigen Jahren propagiert die internationale “Open-Access”-Bewegung den freien, kostenlosen Zugang zu wissenschaftlichen Artikeln – abseits kostenpflichtiger Wissenschafts-Journale”, schreibt die Wiener Zeitung in einem Bericht über eine Konferenz, die kuerzlich in Wien stattgefunden hat.

Viele unter uns haben sich geärgert über inhaltslose Seiten von Instituten und über Loginboxen von wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften, deren Abonnement sich immer weniger Institute und Bibliotheken leisten können. Warum wird das Netz nicht dazu genutzt wozu es da ist – zur Verbreitung von Information? Niemals zuvor war dies so einfach wie jetzt.

Die Wiener Zeitung zitiert Kognitionswissenschaftler Stevan Harnard. Ihm zufolge werden nur 15 Prozent der insgesamt 2,5 Mill. Artikel von den Wissenschaftern selbst archiviert und öffentlich ins Netz gestellt – und das, obwohl 92 Prozent der Zeitschriften nichts gegen dieses “self-archiving” haben. Jeder publizierte Artikel sollte “kostenlos, sofort, dauerhaft und im Volltext online jedermann im Internet zur Verfügung gestellt werden”. Das seit das Ziel der “Open Access”-Bewegung.

Wieso sind die Wissenschaftler so zögerlich? Harnard vermutet ein Elfenbeinturm-Denken: “Wissenschafter sind Mönche. Sie arbeiten an einem Problem und wenn sie die Lösung haben, verschwinden die Unterlagen im Schreibtisch und sie wenden sich der nächsten Fragestellung zu”.

Daher scheint die Forscher auch nicht zu beeindrucken, dass
sie weder gelesen noch zitiert werden. Im Artikel wird eine Studie erwähnt. Die Zitierraten von Artikeln, die von den Forschern selbst online gestellt wurden, seien zwischen 50 und 300 Prozent höher als vergleichbare Arbeiten, die ausschließlich in Zeitschriften erschienen waren. “Das ist astronomisch, wenn man bedenkt, dass die meisten Artikel, rund 55 Prozent, überhaupt nicht zitiert werden”, so Harnard. >> zum Artikel in der Wiener Zeitung

Erfreulicherweise ist die Open Access Bewegung am Wachsen, wozu sicher auch die steigende Anzahl von bloggenden Ethnologen beiträgt

SIEHE AUCH:

Berliner Erklärung über offenen Zugang zu wissenschaftlichem Wissen (pdf)

Open Access Nachrichten auf netbib.de – weblog

Kerim Friedman: Open Source Anthropology: Concerns over the ethnical dilemmas involved in producing knowledge about the “other” have radically changed how anthropologists conduct research and write ethnographies. Unfortunately, they have not changed how we publish

Alex Golub: Making The Electronic Text Cannonical: Fragments Towards An Open Source Anthropology

Marshall Sahlins wants to make the Internet the new medium for traditional pamphleteering (Creative Commons)

Anthropologists have the opportunity to take part in shaping a new culture of sustainable access to scholarly information (Anthropology News October 2004)

weitere Links im mehrsprachigen antropologi.info Spezial: Open Access Anthropology

"Seit einigen Jahren propagiert die internationale "Open-Access"-Bewegung den freien, kostenlosen Zugang zu wissenschaftlichen Artikeln - abseits kostenpflichtiger Wissenschafts-Journale", schreibt die Wiener Zeitung in einem Bericht über eine Konferenz, die kuerzlich in Wien stattgefunden hat.

Viele unter uns haben sich geärgert über…

Nettutstilling: Fotografiet i vitenskapens tjeneste

Published on June 24, 2005 by lorenz Posted in faghistorie, formidling, kunnskapsdeling på Internett, museum, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark, visuell antropologi

Teknisk Ukeblad skriver om en ny nettutstilling av Norsk Teknisk Museum. Den tar for seg en historisk gjennomgang av temaet “Fotografiet i vitenskapens tjeneste”. Spesielt interessant for oss er delen om fysisk antropologi i Norge – en mørk del av faghistorien vår. Fysisk antropologi er pseudovitenskaplig rasisme.

Museet portretterer Carl Arbo, som var ifølge utstilingsteksten “den fremste fysiske antropologen i Norge på slutten av 1800-tallet”. I 1884 publiserte han avhandlingen ”Nogle Bidrag til Nordmændenes fysiske Anthropologi”. På grunnlag av målinger av hodeformen hos over 20 000 individer hevdet han at det i Norge eksisterte to rasetyper: En type med korte hodeskaller langs kysten og en type med lange skaller i innlandet. >> les mer i nettutstillingen

Del av utstillingen er et >> lysbildeforedrag ”Norske befolkningstyper” i Kristiania Arbeiderakademi, 1890-1906

SE OGSÅ:
S. Rahima Parvin: Fysisk antropologi – en del av vår arv (Antropress, UiO, 4.3.05)

Teknisk Ukeblad skriver om en ny nettutstilling av Norsk Teknisk Museum. Den tar for seg en historisk gjennomgang av temaet "Fotografiet i vitenskapens tjeneste". Spesielt interessant for oss er delen om fysisk antropologi i Norge - en mørk del av…