~ a group blog on a variety of topics related to anthropology, sociology, and ordinary people ~
Here is a recent article about test scores from the New York Times, “No Rich Child Left Behind.” They got through the entire article without connecting cognitive abilities to inherited intelligence. Instead, the connection is made to wealth, poverty, and early childhood development. Do middle/upper class things for a child at night (“Goodnight Moon time”), and they are going to fit into the academic world created by the upper and middle classes in the schools. …
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. …
Michael in the last pot here, is pointing to a book review “No Big Deal, but This Researchers’ Theory Explains Everything about How Americans Parent” in Slate.org that describes something that is self-evident to anthropologists, i.e. that whatever is defined as “cognitively advanced” is in fact culturally determined. This is a point which I tried to make, apparently unsuccessfully, to commenters on this article, which was posted in Ethnography.com…
Many anthropologists are concerned with the tendency of biologists to reduce social life in general, and culture in particular to the genes people carry. As a sociologist, I share that concern. I think that such reductionist approaches give a false sense of precision to the concept of culture which while very real, is often messy at the edges in very human ways.
I came up against this tendency to “reduce” everything to genetics recently in an article about the Mla Bri of Thailand, a small group (200-300 people) speaking a Khmuic language in northern Thailand. …
I just finished my semester teaching as a Guest Professor at Leuphana University in Germany, and am beginning to figure out an answer to a question I get asked frequently: “What is the difference between American and German universities?” Actually, the German students who have been exchange students in the United States have helped me along. They say:
…In American universities, there’s lots of assignments, busy work really, and the students are not expected to take responsibility for their own learning.
The Anthropology blogosphere (including Ethnography.com, SavageMinds.org, anthropologyreport.com and even National Public Radio) has recently lit up with critiques of Jared Diamond’s new book The World Until Yesterday. Jared Diamonditis seems to be a regular affliction of anthropology, re-emerging every time that the esteemed Professor of Geography (and Physiology) publishes a new tome of big picture history. The manner that Diamond does this is something that anthros really don’t seem to like. …
As the Obama Administration’s new “Big Data Research and Development Initiative” has made clear, the “big data” era is officially upon us. The term – “big data” has been used in multiple ways, but most generally refers to the avalanche of “raw data” generated by the internet and other new kinds of data-capturing sensor and digital technologies. Or, as one big data guru more pithily put it, it is “all the stuff we do online” – and more.…
In summer 2011, I had the pleasure of co-teaching a Sociology/English class for American students in Thailand. One of the real pleasures was using novels to illustrate sociological principles. It was kind of like profession (sociology) meets hobby (reading novels). I hope that the students liked it—I certainly did, and this blog is about what was my favorite Thai novel of the summer, Behind the Painting. It proved to be ideal for discussing a wide range of subjects stretching across both sociology and literature, particularly the meaning of duty and love in structuring Thai and American society.…
Explaining why people do things, even when it doesn’t seem reasonable to an American undergraduate is what I do for a living. I’ve explained why people don’t agree with their political views, the persistence of “irrational habits,” why most people don’t want to move to America, why poverty persists in a world of abundance, and a whole bunch of things that the many undergraduates do not want to believe. And after I’m done they undergraduates still don’t generally understand how people could have such persistent beliefs and practices which to them are just not logical.…
Karen Connelly was a Rotary Exchange student in Phrae Province, northern Thailand, in 1986-1987 as a 16 and 17 year old. She published an enchanting memoir about her experiences in Phrae Province Dream of a Thosuand Lives: A Sojourn in Thailand in 1993, a book that won the coveted Governor General’s prize for Canadian Literature. I can indeed understand well why the book won the prize. Her descriptions of Phrae bring alive the world of northern Thailand in the 1980s. …
I think that there is a difference between the nature of policing and the military rooted in the nature of legitimacy. But does the US government in fighting in Afghanistan really understand this too? See the discussion at CurrentIntelligence.net, where I posted “Differentiating Between Police and Military Action.” Find out what Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, the DC sniper, and the Unabomber all have in common.
Tony Waters is czar and editor of Ethnography.com.