It is funny how many prof’s and students forget this wee detail, but it is true. At the end of the day, you as the student are there to LEARN and to achieve YOUR goals. The job of your instructors is to GUIDE you and show you how to be a better and more rigorous thinker. Sadly, in the real world in order to get through Grad school you are going to be kissing a lot of professor ass because, well, they got sh*t on all through grad school and so now its your turn.…
Author: mark
American Anthropological Association dissolves, decides to start over tomorrow.
APG Newswire WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Anthropological Association (AAA) made the announcement today that its Joint Committee for Publishing and Employment Services unanimously recommended the immediate dissolution of the AAA, stating there was nothing left to study.
James Curry, the newly-past President of the now defunct AAA, stated the organization had no choice. “Look, it’s all been done. All of it. We have talked to every god forsaken group on the planet, and there is nothing left to study.”…
Undergraduate Seminar: Doing that 1st fieldwork project for class
At some point as an undergrad, particularly if you are taking a social science class you may be asked to do some kind of field project as an assignment. The kind where you have to go out and talk to live, squishy people… preferably strangers, write down what they say and do some form of perfunctory analysis of it.
Now of course you have some decisions to make as we talked about in other entries on this topic: you’re thinking about the grade you want, how much time it is going to take, and how to fit it in with your hectic schedule of binge drinking and procrastination.…
Undergrad Seminar: How long should this paper be?
Every student wants to know “How long should this paper be?” I think that’s a pretty reasonable question, but for some reason instructors sometimes treat this question like one of the deadly sins. Ironically, when your instructor is asked to present a paper, they are given the answer to that very question at the beginning! Conferences state how long the abstract should be, how long the sessions are, how many participants and often how long they personally have to speak.…
Undergrad Seminar: Why Incompletes Are So Dangerous
Here we are in the 2nd half of the academic year. If the 1st half got off to a rocky start, maybe this is a good time to talk about time management. Not the “The 7 habits of that smugly overambitious go-getter” variety. This is aimed more at the “How can I squeeze school into my hectic schedule of procrastination and binge drinking” style. In other words, for the rest of us.…
Johnny Cash, my family witch craft and why it is so ordinary.
My family – mother and father sides – are from the Appalachian regions. We are from, as my father said “Coal miners and dirt farmers.” I was the 3rd person in either family to ever get a college degree, my father and older brother being the 1st and 2nd. When dad was younger he worked the Ohio river: on tugs, in bars and a little bit of coal mining and petty larceny as he worked his way to becoming a doctor.…
“The Onion” continues to support all four fields of anthropology
Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of ‘Friendster’ Civilization!!
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Here is a call for papers, a nice reason to see Liverpool in the Fall.
The 5th Annual Joint University of Liverpool Management School and Keele University Institute for Public Policy and Management Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences.
In Association with the Journal Ethnography
Work, Organisations and Ethnography
Wednesday 1st – Friday 3rd September 2010
Venue:
Queen Mary, University of London. Mile End Road, London, England
Call for Papers
In recent years, ethnography has become an increasingly popular mode of research enquiry within the social and management sciences.…
Contemporary Ethnography Across the Disciplines Hui
This announcement showed up in my e-mail, nicely formatted too:
Contemporary Ethnography Across the Disciplines Hui
17 – 19 November 2010
University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Kia ora koutou (Greetings to everyone)!
New Zealand’s first international ethnography hui will give participants the opportunity to meet with like-minded researchers and experience the rich cultural tradition that is Aoteaoroa, New Zealand. The hui, or conference gathering, will take place at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand from 17-19 November, 2010, with exciting pre-conference workshops scheduled for the afternoon of Monday 16 November 2010. …
Now Available for your Xmas giving, Chief Culture Officer by Grant McCracken!
I am pleased to let people know about a new book by fellow social science innovator, Grant McCracken. Hi book ” Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities” was a major inspiration for me when I started my career in design anthropology and have have been reading his blog ever since. (Grant, please..please go back to the old format!). Below is the press release, and I will follow up after I give it a read. …
The Chrysler Peapod, The Reason Innovation Gets a Bad Name
I believe the time of the electric vehicle is drawing near. It makes a lot of sense: we already have the ubiquitous infrastructure for “fueling” – any electric socket -, can be recharged with renewable energy, and does not have the fear factor some people have about driving around with a tank of hydrogen in back of them. (BTW, hydrogen as fuel is as safe as standard gasoline using modern storage methods).…
The ethnography of a stroke
I first heard of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor during an interview on Fresh Air, it is a great conversation (Listen to the interview, not just the text, it is more in depth than the TED talk you see here). Thanks to my friend Mariflora for bringing the TED link to my attention. How often do we get the emic on such a matter? Well worth watching and forming your own ideas from.…