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International Polar Year opened – Anthropologists involved

Published on February 28, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Arctic / Northern Regions, ecology nature, inuit

More than 50,000 scientists from 63 nations turned their attention to the world’s poles when the International Polar Year officially opened on Monday: It unifies 228 research projects about the impact of global warming in the Arctic the Washington Post reports.

Anthropologists are also part of it. “Anthropologists are also planning to study the culture and politics of some the Arctic’s 4 million inhabitants” according to the newspaper.

More information can be found on the website of the Polar Year where the participants already have started blogging. The website provides lots of RSS feeds.

One of the projects about people in the Arctic is:

NOMAD: Reindeer herding from a reindeer perspective:

The central idea of NOMAD is the establishment of a mobile observation platform. This is facilitated by a nomadic tent camp that houses an interdisciplinary group of researchers. They follow the annual migration of semi-domesticated reindeer in Kola Peninsula, Northwest Russia. This is a novel effort, putting social and other scientists on the reindeer trek on a long-term basis. By positioning themselves in close contact with migrating reindeer herds the researchers observe the delicate ecology and conditions of renewable resource use in the subarctic.
(…)
The NOMAD Blog and Forum will start as soon as the first photographs and entries of the fieldwork diary will be sent over from the camp to the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle, Germany). We reckon this will happen in late April 2007.

On the website of the Indigenous People International Polar Year, we can see presentations from a workshop and videos. Among others, you can watch the whole Opening of the Indigenous Peoples International Polar Year, in Guovdageaidnu, Norway online – a three-day’s conference! Unfortunately there are no subtitles (presentations in both Norwegian, English, Saami).

Recent news coverage about the Polar Year

Greenland meltdown could change the world: If ice covering the island melts, rising sea levels could displace millions from Florida to Bangladesh (The Vancouver Sun, 28.2.07)

More than 50,000 scientists from 63 nations turned their attention to the world's poles when the International Polar Year officially opened on Monday: It unifies 228 research projects about the impact of global warming in the Arctic the Washington Post…

“A new approach to the collection of traditional Aboriginal music”

Published on February 28, 2007 by lorenz Posted in aboriginees, anthropology in the news, culture traditions, fieldwork / methods, music, technology

The days of anthropologists taking recordings away to Canberra where they might as well be lost to the community forever, are now gone according to ABC Radio (Australia) in a story about the National Recording Project. Its aim is to document the traditions of Indigenous Australia.

What’s different here is that performers, and language experts from the communities are recognised as co-researchers, alongside the university based musicologists, linguists and anthropologists. Instead of the music being recorded onto tapes and taken away to vast archives in the southern cities, it’s recorded digitally and is stored on solar powered local computers in remote communities.

>> read more at ABC Radio

In their paper The National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia: year one in review, the authors Allan Marett, Mandawuy Yunupingu, Marcia Langton, Neparrnga Gumbula, Linda Barwick and Aaron Corn write in the abstract:

Many Indigenous performers now keep recordings of their forebears’ past performances and listen to them for inspiration before performing themselves. In recent years, community digital archives have been set up in various Australian Indigenous communities. Not only can recordings reinforce memory and facilitate the recovery of lost repertoire, they can also provide inspiration for creative extensions of tradition.

>> read the whole paper (pdf, 596kb)

There are several related papers in the Sydney eScholarship Repository

“Aboriginal knowledge is science”

How internet changes the life among the First Nations in Canada

Multimedia Music Ethnography of Yodelling and Alphorn Blowing

Aboriginees in Australia: Why talking about culture?

The emerging research field of medical ethnomusicology: How music fights AIDS

On the Roots of Ethnic Music: Identity and Global Romanticism – Open Access Musicology Journal

How do low-cost airlines influence how people and money travel?

Published on February 28, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, globalisation, migration, tourism

The International Herald Tribune writes about how European low-cost airlines “are drawing a new map of how people and money travel in Europe”. An example:

Andrzej Majewski, a Pole who works as a thoracic surgeon in Britain, catches a ride to the airport in Wroclaw on Sundays and hops a Ryanair flight to his hospital in Nottingham, England. Most Fridays he commutes home to southwest Poland. The flights cost him about $50 each way. “It takes about three hours, and I’m eating lunch at my house,” Majewski said.

“The low-cost airlines really facilitate a type of hypermobility for the public at large to do anything from leisure to business, to new careers”, Steven Vertovec, a professor of transnational anthropology at Oxford University comments.

But not everyone is happy with Europeans’ mobility. People in countries served by budget airlines complain that British bachelor and bachelorette parties are taking over Eastern European cities like Riga.

“I know about guys who go to Prague for a weekend of cheap beer, prostitutes and fighting. “People there really complain about it — and that’s due to low-cost airline”, Vertovec says.

>> read the whole story in the IHT (link updated)

The article is good PR for RyanAir as it is not mentioned that somebody has to pay for the low prices

Vertovec is director of the Oxford Center on Migration Policy and Society. The center has published lots of working papers online. I’ve written about one of them before “No Pizza without Migrants”: Between the Politics of Identity and Transnationalism by Susanne Wessendorf.

The International Herald Tribune writes about how European low-cost airlines "are drawing a new map of how people and money travel in Europe". An example:

Andrzej Majewski, a Pole who works as a thoracic surgeon in Britain, catches a ride to…

In India: Many anthropology departments are shutting down

Published on February 28, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Asia, University / Academia

Anthropology in India is losing relevance. Many anthropology departments are shutting down, especially in Western India. “Gifted anthropologists” are also shifting to other professions. At the Second Indian Anthropological Congress, KK Basa, director of the anthropology museum Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, said anthropological theory needed to keep pace with rapid globalisation.

“Anthropology as a discipline developed in the colonial period is fast losing relevance. It needs to adapt to the transition taking place today,” said Basa according to Express India.

Reading this I wonder what kind of anthropology is practiced in India?

“Discuss politics!” – How anthropologists in Indonesia engage with the public

More and more anthropologists, but they’re absent from public debates – “Engaging Anthropology” by Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1)

Why anthropology fails to arouse interest among the public – Engaging Anthropology (2)

Riots in France and silent anthropologists

Chronicles Women’s Social Movements in India

The Rediff Interview/Nandini Chattopadhyay: Music and Protest

Why American shopping culture is rejected in India

Anthropology in India is losing relevance. Many anthropology departments are shutting down, especially in Western India. "Gifted anthropologists" are also shifting to other professions. At the Second Indian Anthropological Congress, KK Basa, director of the anthropology museum Indira Gandhi…

Somalisk ungdom like flink som andre ungdommer

Published on February 26, 2007 by lorenz Posted in innvandring migrasjon, Norge, somaliere, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark, ungdom oppvekst, vi og de andre

Ungdom med somalisk og tamilsk bakgrunn ser ikke ut til å reprodusere de forskjellene vi finner hos foreldrene. Det er bare små forskjeller mellom disse ungdommenes nettverk, skoleprestasjoner og livsglede, og det vi finner blant tamilske ungdommer, ifølge en ny NOVA-rapport av antropologene Ada Ingrid Engebrigtsen og Øivind Fuglerud.

“Vår konklusjon er at ungdommenes, skolens og foreldrenes samlede innsats ser ut til å jevne ut mange av de sosiale forskjellene som finnes i foreldregenerasjonen”, skriver de.

Likevel må disse ungdommene må ta stilling til vanskelige valg i ung alder som ikke norske ungdommer stilles overfor:

Den sterke lojaliteten ungdommene har til foreldre og til sin kulturelle bakgrunn, sammen med deres klare ambisjoner om utdannelse, utgjør et sosialt sikkerhetsnett som ser ut til å hindre asosial atferd, men som også hindrer deltakelse på mange norske arenaer. Denne tosidigheten kan beskrives som: på den ene siden ønsket om lydighet til familien, som skaper tilhørighet og trygghet, på den andre siden ønsket om å dyrke vennskap og «frihet», som kan innebære brudd med familien og utrygghet.

Forskerne oppdaget dessuten en kosmopolitisk innstilling: Ungdommene er nok svært bevisst sin egen etniske tilhørighet, men tar avstand fra etnisitet som grunnlag for vennskap. Derimot er klasse, eller skillet mellom østkantungdom og «sosser», grunnleggende for vennskap.

Rapporten bygger ikke på feltarbeid. Forskerne har gjennomført 36 intervjuer med 61 ungdommer og 13 intervjuer med ungdomsarbeidere i løpet av 2005 og 2006. Videre bygger rapporten på data fra NOVAs surveyundersøkelse Ung i Oslo 2006.

>> les oppsummeringen av rapporten på NOVAs hjemmeside

>> last ned hele rapporten (pdf)

Etter min mening må en se på slik forskning som sammenligner mennesker på grunn av deres nasjonalitet med en viss skepsis: Hvor relevant er nasjonalitet? Kan andre faktorer mer relevante for å forklare forskjeller? Problematisk er dessuten at forskning med et slikt fokus er med på å reprodusere nasjonal og etnisk basert tenkning. Jeg har bare lest konklusjonen, det kan derfor godt hende at forskerne går inn på dette.

Les mer om slik “metodologisk nasjonalisme” i teksten min Hvorfor så mye dårlig forskning?

SE OGSÅ:

“Vi overvurderer nasjonale forskjeller” – Kritiserer undervurdering av klasseforskjeller i innvandringsdebatten

“Kompetente kulturnavigatører snarere enn forvirret og rotløs ungdom”

Ny rapport: Foreldrenes bakgrunn viktigere enn etnisitet eller nasjonalitet

Forskjeller viskes ut dersom man tar høyde for sosial bakgrunn

Viggo Vestel: – Ungdommen håndterer kulturforskjeller ved å vektlegge det de har felles