~ a group blog on a variety of topics related to anthropology, sociology, and ordinary people ~
Last month we moved to Thailand, and one of the first things we did was buy a car to get around Chiangmai. The Chiangmai area has something over 1 million people. The middle of the city is a tourist hub organized within the crooked streets of “the old city,” many of which are one-way. These are surrounded by an actual moat which forms a square. Outside the moat are massive “ring roads” near one of which I know live.…
I am in the midst of new stimuli. Last week, my wife and I moved from from Chico, California, USA, to a new job in Chiangmai, Thailand. I had my first class on Sunday in Business Statistics, and I had some vague idea of writing up the experience for ethnography.com. But I’m at a loss of where to start. My observations are a blur—meaning that in ethnographic terms, there is not yet a frame.…
What does it look like when academics are sacrificed to other priorities at the university? This is the main reason Chico State faculty have issued a “No Confidence vote about the President of Chico State, Paul Zingg. Let me take my own Department of Sociology at Chico State as an example. We have lost eight tenure track faculty positions since 2011. These have been replaced with three new tenure track positions so far, and perhaps one more next year.…
This is a rather odd post for a blog which typically addresses national and international issues. This blog is about my own university, Chico State, in California, which has worked very hard to qualify for federal money to be a “Hispanic Serving Institution.” This is a good thing, as California is rapidly changing ethnic composition as California has always done in the last 200 years. The idea is that Chico State will get extra money if it can attract and serve at least 25% full time “Hispanic” students (in California this typically means students who have a family history in Mexico, or Central America who are typically referred to as Chicano or Latino).…
Vigilantism in a Tanzanian Village, 1997
from
When Killing is a Crime, by Tony Waters
Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997
…By Essau Magugudi in Kigoma
NOVEMBER 27, 1997, is deeply etched in the memories of Shunga villagers. It was on this day that they took law into their own hands and hacked to death three bandits who they suspected of carrying out acts of robbery in villages surrounding refugee settlements of Mutabira and Muyovozi.
In this extract from Max Weber’s classic essay “Politics as Vocation.” Max Weber is about to let loose regarding the insistence of the victorious Allies of World War I that Germany accept fault for starting the war in 1914, and feel “guilty” for doing so. He doesn’t like this, and compares it to the ethics of a romantic cad.
…
You will rarely find a man, who no longer loves a woman and therefore turns to another, will not feel the need to justify himself by arguing: “She was not worth my love, or she disappointed me”—or what other reasons there may be.
The first time I was told to “teach like you do in America” was in 2003-2004 in Tanzania where I was a Fulbright Scholar at the Sociology Department at the University of Dar Es Salaam (see Waters 2007). UDSM is a large sprawling African university, spread across “The Hill” near the Indian Ocean coast. UDSM prides itself for schooling presidents from Tanzania, Uganda, Congo, and South Sudan and its many graduates who played critical roles in first the decolonization of Africa, and now the political leadership of many countries.…
The United States was set back on its heels in the 1930s by the Great Depression. As a result, the United States charged the high schools with making the children “workforce ready.” The hope was that the schools could train children for the workforce of tomorrow—i.e. the 1940s—when the manufacturing base of the United States would be revitalized, and prosperity would return. I this context, children were kept in school longer (and out of the workforce), with the idea that they would be able to recreate the successful societies that the planners knew—the cities of the pre-Depression 1920s.…
One of my favorite sociological essays is Teodor Adorno’s 1941 “On Popular Music.” Adorno didn’t much like the popular music he heard on the radio in Los Angeles, and said so. He found it simplistic, monotonous, limited and manipulative. With an emphasis on manipulative. For besides being a classically trained musician, Adorno was also a leading critic of capitalism, and especially its need for endless consumption so that large corporations could generate profits.…
What are the limits to globalization? Does it apply to the university systems of the world, or is one university system just about the same as every other?
My experience is that at least for sociology, it is not “always just the same. I have taught abroad in Tanzania and Germany, and in each place, I ran up against different cultural expectations about what a university education involves. Recently, Palgrave Communications published my article explaining why it is in fact difficult to teach abroad.…
The meeting about shared governance at Chico State that Julie attended and reported on here at Ethnography.com “Shared Governance or Managed Dissent,” in the form of a letter from California State University Chancellor Timothy White has run into a brick wall. The dispute has turned into an argument over the meaning of the word “civility,” and almost incidentally, the nature of bullying.Not a good frame work for addressing problems raised by the Academic Senate!…
“Teach like you do in America!” is the default instruction I receive when teaching overseas. I have heard it in Germany, Tanzania, and last summer in China. It is the default instruction by my hosts who assume that university classes are “about the same” everywhere in a globalizing world. What can I say? It ain’t completely true, and I wrote 4,000+ words to make this point in Palgrave Communications, a new Open Source journal.…