~ a group blog on a variety of topics related to anthropology, sociology, and ordinary people ~
Three things on this holiday week:
1) In Slate there was a wonderful photo essay on sworn virgins in the Balkans. Also, here is a BBC interview with Antonia Young, the author of Women Who Become Men.
2) What would a holiday week be without a minor donnybrook over race and genes? This week brings us a useful discussion at the NYRB between Richard C. Lewontin and Nadia Abu El-Haj on the topic “Is There a Jewish Gene?”…
As frequent readers of Ethnography.com (if there is such a thing) know, our esteemed founder Mark Dawson has disappeared from these pages after last posting on April 1, 2012. Amazingly, he has even disappeared from the internet. But as exclusively reported , AAA has hired him, and he is on a top-secret mission to save anthropology from the Mayan Apocalypse which is scheduled for–tomorrow, December 21, 2012.
As interim editor of ethnography.com,…
Can getting a master’s degree help your career outlook? Or is it more of a drain on your mental outlook? These are the questions education analyst Bree Hernandez explores in the next article.
Today’s university students have more to balance than ever before, and Bree’s blog profiles many of the competing pulls. Still, the mental health and psychological well-being of students is not often addressed in enough detail. Bree’s piece seeks to spark discussion on this important topic.…
What is the relationships between the subsistence farmers and the bureaucrats of the World Bank, USAID, DFID, JICA, and the host of government-sponsored development aid projects? Such projects are sponsored by clever, well-educated, powerful, and wealthy people. And yet they often fail—and the clever powerful people turn around and blame the subsistence farmer.
But I do not think that this is the whole story. The broader question is how do the impoverished farmers manage to frustrate the smart rich people who have degrees so consistently? …
I think that there is a difference between the nature of policing and the military rooted in the nature of legitimacy and emotions, specifically the emotion of fear.
But does the US government in fighting in Afghanistan really understand this too? See the discussion at CurrentIntelligence.net, where I posted “Differentiating Between Police and Military Action.” Find out what terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, the DC sniper, and the Unabomber all have in common.…
Ever worry about how those Cs you had as a sophomore would look on a grad school application? Or maybe a D?
Worried because every grad school says “we only take the best,” or some such nonsense (look, no one can take the “best,” even if there is such a thing).
Ever wonder how long those bad grades can follow you through an otherwise fascinating and enriching career in “the real world.” …