Blogs by Guest Writers – Page 2

A Tale Within a Tale: The Dual Nature of Ebenezer Scrooge

Posted on January 6, 2015January 5, 2015 by Julie Garza-Withers

By Guest Writer: David Van Huff

In passing, I met a hypothetical man some years back who laid claim to a tale within a tale, which has forever changed the way I think about a classic story from the past. For those of you who have heard the story the A Christmas Carol (Dickens, 1843) once, I’m sure you’ve heard it a thousand times again with little or no concern. True, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) has crafted a near magical piece of literature within the cover of this epic book; however, we now live in a culture that commercially assaults its inhabitants, all the while, converting timeless words, into mere recycled words for hire.…

Searching for Answers: Retracing a Hmong Heritage

Posted on November 17, 2014November 17, 2014 by Julie Garza-Withers

Today’s post comes from Guest Ethnographer Dee Thao. This is a beautiful and honest film Dee directed and edited about her search for information and connection to her Hmong heritage and identity. Her “advisor extraordinaire” (and co-star) on this project was ethnography.com’s Tony Waters.

Dee Thao is a documentarian based out of northern California. Click this link to read her bio and view her most recent work.

Julie Garza-Withers

Julie Garza-Withers, former award-winning community college Sociology instructor who’s currently using Sociology to organize and research for racial justice in rural northern California.

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Is Your Class in the Way?

Posted on November 4, 2014January 21, 2015 by Julie Garza-Withers

By: N. Jeanne Burns

Fortune cookie image

A few weeks ago at the YWCA Midtown I sat outside the gate to cool down from my run. I scrolled through Twitter posts about the Dunn trial and read about whites fearing blacks. Then I heard the desk clerk say, “You can only use your driver’s license three times. After the next two times, you won’t be admitted until you get a new YWCA ID.”…

Anthropological Fieldwork by Daiva Repeckaite

Posted on November 3, 2014January 21, 2015 by Tony Waters

Fieldwork-byDR1

Tony Waters

Tony Waters is czar and editor of Ethnography.com. He came to us from the Sociology department at California State University at Chico where he has been a professor since 1996. In 2016 though he suddenly found himself with a new gig at Payap University in northern Thailand where he is on the faculty of the Peace Studies Department. He has also been a guest professor in Germany, and Tanzania.

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Boldly go Towards Collaboration

Posted on July 24, 2013November 4, 2014 by James

Nicholas A Christakis’ story in the NY Times is serious food for thought.

Christakis starts “Let’s Shake Up the Social Sciences” with the following:

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, when I was a graduate student, there were departments of natural science that no longer exist today. Departments of anatomy, histology, biochemistry and physiology have disappeared, replaced by innovative departments of stem-cell biology, systems biology, neurobiology and molecular biophysics. Taking a page from Darwin, the natural sciences are evolving with the times.

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Ethnography and Russian Israelis in Tel Aviv: Getting Reluctant People to Speak

Posted on February 9, 2013January 21, 2015 by Tony Waters

by Daiva Repeckaite

Guest blogger Daiva Repeckaite is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social and
Cultural Anthropology, VU University Amsterdam. Her thesis research is
on networking practices and ideas about citizenship of Russian-speaking
Israelis, particularly those living in poorer areas in Tel Aviv. Daiva
has carried out her first fieldwork in Israel for eight months in
2009-2010, and is currently in Tel Aviv to do additional interviews and
participant observations.…

This Week in Ethnography: Does Jared Diamond do Ethnography?

Posted on January 21, 2013November 4, 2014 by James

This week in Ethnography, I realized that “DIY anthropologist” Jared Diamond is now moving into the area of anthropology I hold most dear – ethnography. In earlier publications and movies, Diamond has dabbled in other areas of anthropology (e.g., archeology and physical) but his latest work cuts too close for my comfort. Barbara J. King posted a review of Diamond’s latest book entitled, “The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?”…

This Week in Ethnography: Blog, “LivingEthnography”

Posted on January 12, 2013November 4, 2014 by James

This Week in Ethnography I found an interesting blog entitled,

LIVING ETHNOGRAPHY: Research and Conversations on Ethnography, Writing and Folklore

As personal blogs go, it’s more productive than most and the content is appealing. The About page is interesting in that it provides a few hints at the authors identity but no name:

I am a Folklorist, writer and ethnographer; I study immigration, communities and change. My current academic book project, Diversity Dependence: Suburban Identity and the Quest for a Multicultural Ideal examines three locations where immigrants and newcomers fundamentally influence political dynamics and identity.

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THIS WEEK IN ETHNOGRAPHY: Teaching Anthropology ‘Way Off Campus

Posted on January 8, 2013November 4, 2014 by James

This week in Ethnography, Heather E. Young-Leslie, Ph.D. describes how best to teach ethnography in the post entitled Sand in My Syllabus; Teaching Anthropology ‘Way Off Campus.

The anthropologist professor is not replaceable, not redundant. But the style of teaching anthropology that we have had since WWII… well, that is replaceable.

I start with the above quotation from the conclusion to give you a taste of the power of this piece. …

TWIE: Liverpool-Keele Ethnography Symposium

Posted on August 23, 2012November 4, 2014 by James

This week in Ethnography, the 7th Annual Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences will be held in University of Liverpool Management School, Liverpool, United Kingdom. This conference is sponsored by the University of Liverpool Management School and Keele University, Institute for Public Policy and Management in association with the Journal of Organizational Ethnography.

This year’s theme: Ethnographic Horizons in Times of Turbulence

This is interesting for a few reasons. …

This Week in Ethnography: All Tomorrow’s Cultures: Tagging Anthropology

Posted on August 13, 2012October 29, 2014 by James

This Week in Ethnography, I have thought about Public Anthropology. Samuel Gerald Collins of All Tomorrow’s Cultures posted a great piece on the subject this week entitled Tagging Anthropology. Public Anthropology is not a new subject by any means. A Google search on the subject will show over 600,000 results and limiting your search to Savage Minds will still give you more than a week’s worth of reading. In fact, this subject is so mature that the The 9th Annual Public Anthropology Conference is just around the corner (not the first or second, but the 9th!) …

Methods to Mind: Long or Short Term Approaches to Ethnographic Research

Posted on July 31, 2012November 4, 2014 by James

The following post from culturnicity got me thinking about the ongoing grudge match between those who demand a year in the field [imagine someone with a long beard in an arm-chair saying “to record a full record of experiences during the ecological annum”] compared to those who are more focused on the content and outcomes of the project. In Ethnography as participant listening, Forsey drives this point home with the following point:

Defining ethnography according to its purpose rather than its method encourages participation in, and engagement with, the lives of our fellow human beings (Forsey, 2011: 569).

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