~ a group blog on a variety of topics related to anthropology, sociology, and ordinary people ~
Last week, I wrote about how “graduate students” are “cooled out” of PhD. programs in something of a pyramid scheme, i.e. how 60-70% of the students who are admitted eventually drop out of the program, while blaming their “failure” on themselves, and not the larger system.
August is the month in the United States where many adjunct faculty are being told “I’m sorry we don’t have any classes for you,” for reasons beyond the control of the Chair, Dean, or other administrator in charge of hiring.…
I have been in Thailand a week now, and have had plenty of chances to speak Thai, often because I have to explain about how my daughter broker her back last week. I speak Thai as a result of my Peace Corps and after experience in Thailand in 1980-1983, and some brush-up tutoring a couple of years ago. Anyway, I find that I speak Thai with a great deal of confidence after all these years—and why shouldn’t I?…
Introduction
We arrived in Thailand last Thursday to visit our daughter Kirsten who teaches English in a Thai school. Within a half hour of arrival we were informed that she had just had an accident. She was driving her scooter near a Thai market in the small city of Phrae, when a “white car” backed out in front of her. She hit the brakes, skidded out, and fell into an on-coming truck whose wheels gave her back a big whack.…
I’m leaving Germany after a two month long teaching gig at Leuphana University in Lueneburg, which is near Hamburg. Again I was impressed with the version of a university education that is being developed there—it values learning and investigation.
Here is a blog I wrote about German Bildung, the philosophy of education, two years ago: http://www.ethnography.com/2013/02/building-bildung-and-other-improbabilities-among-german-university-undergrads/
As a going away blogs, I’m also leaving you with two of my favorite Germany blogs, both having to do with Germany during World War II.…
Thinking about getting a PhD? Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt is the book to read. Already getting a PhD, ditto. Already have a PhD? You should also read this book, even though it was published way back in 2000, and relies on data from the 1980s and 1990s. It applies to today as well—little has changed. What is more, it gives an insight not only to how graduate schools seeks to shape and discipline a conservative cadre of future professors, the principles can also be applied to the pursuit of tenure for people who have made it that far.…
Still they ask you in court to “use your own words,” and more to the point of my profession, we tell our students to “use your own words,” and we even have fancy computer programs like “turnitin.com” that help us haul offenders off for plagiarism, which is the crime of using someone else’s own words which is, like I said above, is just about all I ever do.
The only people I can think of who made up any number of their own words are Charles Dickens, James Joyce, and Mark Twain.…
We returned from Hamburg to our temporary home in Lueneburg on July 4, 2015, after visiting friends in Hamburg. It was a normal trip on a German train until…it came to a stop at about 9:30 pm. There was a confused silence among the passengers, until the loud speaker finally announced an indefinite delay because something had been thrown on the tracks.
The mystery solved itself a few minutes later. There was a suicide in front of one of the trains, and the emergency equipment had arrived and closed the tracks going both ways.…
I have used this clip of Pete Seeger singing “Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore” in class for some years, now. The song is a great example of how the music of the American slave cabins moved into the mainstream American culture, and then moved all the way to Australia where this clip was made in 1962 or so.
It also, I think illustrates two things about the audience, first that audiences in 1962 were very open to a “sing-a-long,” The audience knew the words, and sang along with Seeger quite competently, and in their own ways enthusiastically.…
The Human Terrain System (HTS) was an important subject at Ethnography.com when the military began funding it in 2006-2007 or so. The program was established to bring anthropological understandings of culture into the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq.
There was a great deal of controversy in the AAA, and those of us at Ethnography.com at the time responded about the strengths and weaknesses of the program, as well as whether AAA’s approach.…
Last weekend, I visited The Egyptian Queen Nefertiti this weekend on a trip to Berlin’s Neues Museum. “New” being a museum built in the mid-nineteenth century, bombed during World War II, and finally re-opened in 2009 after reconstruction following German Reunification.
The bust of Nefertiti is the Neues Museum’s best-known artifact. The Nefertiti statue is of Egypt’s Queen during the period of approximately 1370 BC-1330 BC. The statue is known for the skill that the sculptor Thutmose put into it, the well-preserved coloration, and the beauty of Nefertiti herself.…
Why philsopher’s might be optimistic about future job prospects, form Matt Buriesci at Guernia.com, in the ironically titled article “The Arts and Humanities aren’t Worth a Dime.”
Yes, really, Buriesci is predicting that future job prospects for philosophers are more promising than for engineers. Engineers can be replaced with algorithms, but sound judgment, appreciation of history, and appreciation of art is not.
Warning: This is not a quick obvious read. …