~ a group blog on a variety of topics related to anthropology, sociology, and ordinary people ~
The Synthesis is a local weekly newspaper in small-town Chico, California, generally specialized in Entertainment news—stories of local bands, the bar scene, and arts.
Recently, the small paper is branching into more critical hard-hitting news analysis. Emilano Garcia-Sarnoff published “Heart on Fire: The Murder of Marc Thompson” on September 29, which is about the recent death of a Chico State Sociology major found in a burning car in a remote area.…
Another unarmed Black man died at the hands of law enforcement on Thursday night. The NYC Police Commissioner was quick in calling the incident an “unfortunate tragedy” at the same time that the mainstream press has included that the officer was a “rookie” in most of their headlines. Akai Gurley, the 28-year old Brooklyn victim and his girlfriend were leaving her apartment via the stairwell when they ran into two officer’s who were in the midst of conducting a vertical patrol and had just entered the stairwell on the floor above.…
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, former award-winning community college Sociology instructor who’s currently using Sociology to organize and research for racial justice in rural northern California.
By: N. Jeanne Burns
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.”…
Here is a really cool graphic describing the advantages of class and wealth in the United States from DegreeQuery.com. It is a good reminder that there is indeed a strong correlation between wealth and advantages in the American education system. It is also very nicely presented!
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.
By Robert Albro
American University
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) – established in 2006 in the spirit of the Pentagon’s DARPA to sponsor research for groundbreaking technologies to support an “overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries” – is a little-known US agency that social and behavioral scientists (especially sociocultural anthropologists) should pay more attention to. This is because IARPA is notably social scientific in orientation and has been developing concepts in specific ways for use by the intelligence community (IC) that US anthropology in particular is significantly historically responsible for introducing to the social sciences, if in different ways, most obviously: culture, its coherence and the extent of cultural consensus, its relationship to society and to human agency.…
An interesting commercial has been released in Thailand which emphasizes the importance of giving in life. As a number of Facebook friends have pointed out, it is a real tear-jerker whether you are in Thailand or anywhere else.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1439519962939897
Being Thai, this is undoubtedly inspired by Buddhist concepts of karma. But the story, for different reasons, also perhaps reflects Calvinist ideas of pre-destination, or what is sometimes called “theology of works.”…
I just came across this article about elite education, and the habits of the Ivy Leaguers. I really like the opening paragraphs which asks why the author, who is an Ivy League grad has so much trouble talking to the plumber who will fix his pipes.
This has a lot to do with what Pierre Bourdieu and the “habitus” of social class. As the author, William Deresiewicz points out, this is tightly connected to how “intelligent” you are.…
There are two blogs I have read recently which make the good point that reading “classics” is important . At the New York Times, Philosopher Gary Gutting makes the point that a college education is not so much about “the content,” (or presumably the major) but about the habits of reading and inquiry developed. Or as he writes: “We should judge teaching not by the amount of knowledge it passes on, but by the enduring excitement it generates.”…
I’ve been living in Germany for the last nine months. One of my goals is to improve my German skills, and guess what, I am getting better. But still my German is still far from perfect. Occasionally I will be in a conversation (ok more than occasionally) and I will try to guess about meaning. Sometimes I guess kind of right, which means that I will make a kind of odd response to a question. …
Donald Campbell was one of the leading psychologists of the second half of the twentieth century. His was a time of optimism for planners—there was a belief that the power of technology could be brought to bear on many of the world’s ills. And indeed they were, often with positive effects. As a result of central planning, more people receive water, more places are electrified, more children educated, and more diseases eradicated. …
by Maximilian Holland
There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination (Dennett 1995)
An inherent feature of the practice of observation in empirical science is its dependence upon how perception is ordered into description via language and communicated to others. This is true for social, physical, behavioral and other sciences; all are inextricably dependent upon language and pre-existing concepts. …