Most of us like to rant now and then.  Usually we do this in the quiet of a bar, with the assumption that as long as we never run for political office, the rants stay in the bar.  But with the invention of the world wide web, there are new parameters to the dissemination of rants.  Witness what has happened here on www.ethnography.com during the last week where Mark Dawson shot his virtual mouth off with the rant right below this posting.  Witness too the responses over at zeroanthropology.net.  Two guys in virtual bars a continent apart rip into each other, calling each other “moron” and “bigoted” across cyber space, while the rest of us vicariously and anonymously enjoy the fireworks.  The good news for www.ethnography.com is that the two rants by Mark Dawson during the last month or so have sent the hit rate, the thing that counts in cyber-space, through the roof.  His first successful rant was an April Fool’s joke about the dissolution of the AAA, and in May there is the “butterfly” rant.  It seems that some people like rants much more than ethnographic commentary; I guess that it gives us déjà vu to when we were eight years old.  In contrast, Mark has done some enchanting writing about the ethnography of clowns, and some girl’s picture on his bedroom dresser which have attracted less than 100 hits even after 3 years.  All people seem to care about are his rants—which can go into four digits within a few days of posting.

Rants by definition are rooted in opinion and emotion.  They are not logical or analytical.  Good rants make us look at the ridiculousness of life.  As Max Forte has implicitly pointed out, Mark Twain was a great ranter.  On the other hand, bad rants make us roll our eyes and mumble “there he goes again.”  Mark did this for me last week with his first rant about Anthropologists for Justice and Peace.  The rant was emotional and made a big deal about other people who were making a big deal over not much.  In other words, there was ranting about others’ ranting.  Big deal.  This type of rant is common on talk radio.  If you want to hear more such ranting from the right, I recommend Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck.  On the left you can go to a Michael Moore movie.  Depending on your political views, you will find them funny or not (for the record I typically put on rock and roll when Hannity intrudes into my evening commute).

But to Mark Dawson’s credit, he caught himself in a boring rant, and posted a mea culpa about butterflies and the Anthropologists for Justice and Peace.  This riposte in my view was a really good rant, and had me laughing.  I laughed at the rant because the rant made more general fun of cultural anthropology’s tendency to put their own political views at the center of their discipline.  Max Forte has in turn responded with an astute and thoughtful paragraph about the contagion of laughter, and what it might (or might not) mean about the one person in the room who is not laughing.  If you want to read it, scroll down into the comments section of Forte’s blog—it is thoughtful.

Anyway, to stick to Mark’s version of ranting, I have seen the political self-absorption described in Mark’s rant in any number of disciplines in the academic world, and agree that is a great thing to make fun of.  Much such ranting is on the left, but over in the Business and Engineering schools, there are plenty of people doing it on the right.  Perhaps I like hearing cultural anthropology made fun because the condition is worse there, but I doubt that it is any worse than Physics, Business, English, Biology, Sociology, or anywhere else.  Maybe I enjoy seeing cultural anthropology made fun of is more likely for more selfish reason, i.e. because my own application for graduate study was rejected in 1987-1988.  Whatever. Like I mentioned earlier, rants are not about analysis, and certainly not about self-analysis.  But, speaking of Mark’s butterfly posting, judging from the hits we’ve taken to the site since the revised version was posted last Wednesday, lots of people are laughing with us, since they have been linking it to their Facebook accounts to share with their friends and family.  In the blogosphere this is a definition of success, so whoop-ti-do, and good for Mark.

I will admit to wishing that my more academic and boring comments on www.ethnography.com would be a bit more popular.  I would really like it if readers posted them to your Facebook account like you do the rants that Mark writes.  For that matter, Mark would appreciate it if you read his ethnography of clowns, and the girl’s picture on his bedroom dresser.  But warning:  Such posts tend to describe ethnographic techniques, research methods, cite guys like Erving Goffman, and talk about the British Library rather than ranting about morons, fascists, and bigots, words which I think should be excised from ranting vocabulary.

Bottom line: Such serious ethnographic postings get far fewer hits than rants.  All I can hope for is that Mark’s rants besides making some of us laugh, point people to the more serious and boring stuff that Mark, Cindy, Donna, Jennifer, and I have posted to www.ethnography.com over the last 5 or 6 years.  But I have little hope.  In our post-modern world rants work, and Malinowski doesn’t.  Just ask Glenn Beck over at Fox News.  He never cites Malinowski!

If you have never read George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” it is a fine parable on the dangers of those that preach rights… but only for those they agree with.  ”All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

If you don’t have the time to read it (and it is well worth the time) you can “Cliff Notes” it at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm.

Cultural Anthropologists this is the profession you going to accept of you can’t get control of the “anthropologist as activist” that you have given the voice of the field to. To be less subtle, you are giving the character “Napoleon” the control …and you are indeed the rest of the animals on the farm.

EDITORS NOTE: It has been suggested that the original post was somewhat over the top, poorly thought-out, generally missed the point and could use some editing.  Therefore we have assembled a committee consisting of a group of people from a St. Petersburg, Florida shopping mall to red-line this post and edit it in a way they feel is more balanced and considerate. These guest editors where selected by asking passers-by to rate a series of “Ziggy” and “Dennis the Menace” comic strips on a scale from “0″ (somewhat morally questionable) to “5″ (The authors of such foul filthy material should be burned at the stake). A random sample from all those that graded the comics at “3″ or above were asked to edit the post.

Ok, fine here is the link http://anthrojustpeace.blogspot.com/ .  Here is the gist of it.  A band of “Cultural Anthropologists” have gotten together to protest think deeply about a Canadian program called “Project Hero.” The program is pretty simple: If you are a member of the Canadian Military and you get whacked butterflies in combat, your kids have the opportunity to go to college for free.

Yep, that’s pretty much it.  The reason for “Anthropologists For Justice and Peace” to exist is to protest that protect the children of people that are killed given butterflies in the service of their country get to go to college for free.

My god! Golly! I cannot praise the “Anthropologists For Justice and Peace” too highly.  Indeed, you have taken a mighty and courageous stand for humanity! I cannot even start to imagine the massive hardships this program is going to impinge have (guest editor note:  we don’t know what “impinge” means, but it sounds dirty to us.) on you. You may even ( and I shudder to even consider the idea) have one of these children of evil people in one of your classes!  To quote the groups website “Project Hero is not about aid to the children of deceased soldiers, as their needs are already being met.  Rather it is a political effort to justify Canadian participation in the war in Afghanistan and glorify militarism on our campuses.” Really? REALLY? You dimwitted troglodytes. Perhaps you have not thought through how this appears to the casual reader.  Yes, indeed you have uncovered the BIG PLAN.  Get the kids of KIA South Korean import car driving parents  into school so they can “glorify militarism on our campuses.” Honestly, I mean… I just keep struggling in my writing of this post between my utter disbelief that your silly protest exists and the frankly massive fodder it make for heaping and well-deserved abuse on your organization.

Here is a picture of a butterfly, isn’t is pretty?

Ooooh, Pretty!

Yes, all manner of children that have lost a parent as part of the great war machine at the food court of the shopping mall will be  invading enrolling in your classes, infecting learning side by side with the children of good and moral people that were not in the military.

Look.  Here is the deal: You are a bunch of arrogant deep thinking and bigoted assholes people.  Can I make this more plain?  You and those like Gusterson, Gonzalez, Price and Forte are bigots plain and simple.  Present the kind of well-researched and rigorously analyzed views that follow other such intellectual giants as Rush Limbaugh, Bill Riley, Glenn Beck and Joseph McCarthy. Whatever field you are in are known for.  Take most of the statements you make about the military and insert an ethnicity or gender for words like military or solider or other related references and it reads a hell of a lot like bigotry. “Anthropologists For Justice and Peace” and “Network of Concerned Anthropologists” you are ugly bigots plain and simple.  But instead of burning crosses you write articles and books and instead of the white robes of the klan, you hide in the black robes of academia. Have you ever seen a Panda, wow are they SUPER-CUTE! We love Pandas!

A panda cub! Awwwwwww....

So, “Anthropologists For Justice and Peace” stand tall and proud as your bigitory of the military is to be visited on to the children of the military.  Yes, after the death of a parent getting a bunch of flowers, they need you shitting patting them on the head as well.  What a fine legacy you noble anthropologists bring.

STUDENTS:  ”Anthropologists For Justice and Peace” has nothing to do with cultural anthropology. Zero, nothing nana. Wheee, Pop Rocks, we love Pop Rocks. OK?  A long time ago Cultural Anthropology wais a growing an respected science… SCIENCE group of opinions.  Sadly its become the laughing stock of the social sciences. Oh, The other anthro fields: Archaeology, bio anthropology, Linguistic anthropology are still part of science and generally don’t hang with the cultural crowd out of embarrassment. can get stuffed because they are not nearly as cool at the Cultural Anthropologists.

And to paraphrase the first line of the “Anthropologists For Justice and Peace” “Manifesto” (really, cant it just be called in introduction? Or in the FAQ or something?  What is this 1930 Italy?) We don’t understand this, what is a “manifesto?”

“We recognize and support the right of people everywhere to lives lived with self-determination, dignity, freedom, justice, and peace.” I would modify this to include “Unless we disagree with you politically” Any time I see crap proverbs like this I am happy I was allowed to read “The Golden Book Of Fairy Tales” at an early age.

Don’t get me wrong: I totally defend the rights of all manner of ignorant bigots  to publish their opinions, all people should be allowed to do so without restriction.  Otherwise, how else can we identify the total loons? Bless this world of freedoms!

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. Yea, that sucks. If you are an undergrad? There are a lot of great profs out there that love to work with undergrads (including the authors of this blog), but there are plenty of others that see you as a pain in the ass that must be endured to get to what they care about: Yes, harassing grad students and showing them who’s boss. Look, they know a LOT more about the topic area than you. They should, that is their job. But they are not required to be smarter: they are not the source of all wisdom, major or minor. They know a lot about their obscure area of study, but they may well know -zero- about the particular historical fetish you have.

But you students are not off the hook on this deal either. You often show up in the office expecting the ultimate final answer to everything from next weeks quiz to that you should do about that rash you got during a drunken hook-up with an indeterminate number of people over spring break. (And why? WHY? do you insist on showing us the afore-mentioned rash… we believe you, we really do.) Look, your Prof’s are just as screwed up as you, maybe more so because their “eccentricities” are considered typical or even arty (read: behavior that would never be tolerated anywhere outside of a university setting with tenure). The main difference is they have done most of the screw-ups you have and survived them and thus roll their eyes that you are so wrapped around the axle about it. You really do have to take control of your education. It is not a Happy Meal where you get to say “I’ll take the number 5″ and its all dealt with. Well, OK, you can… but you are really wasting a lot of opportunity. Don’t look for Gods, Guru’s or even a mentor, look to LEARN and demand your teachers TEACH. Oddly, if you do that… mentors suddenly show up.

I suggest both students and instructors take my personal hiring philosophy into play. I always want to hire someone much smarter than myself… much smarter. Why? Because I am pretty damned lazy. My life goal is to be able to walk into the office and say: “Wow, I would love to help with this project, but I’m not as smart as you, so I have to go watch a movie and maybe take a nap.” I live to be the tottering former expert that is well past his prime and keeps getting paid scads of cash out of tradition.

And if you, young student, keep following your dreams you can reach mine, and thats what is important that end of the day, my dreams, isn’t it?

DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media
Centre for the Study of the United States, Munk School of Global Affairs
University of Toronto
Nov 12-14, 2010

http://diycitizenship.com/

Call for papers/presentations: due May 20, 2010

Plenary speakers include: Anne Balsalmo, Suzanne de Castell, Ron Deibert, Paul Dourish, Henry Jenkins, Jennifer Jenson, Natalie Jeremijenko, Steve Mann, Trebor Scholz.

Conference Organizers: Prof. Megan Boler, Associate Chair, Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto; Prof. Matthew Ratto Assistant Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto; Director, Critical Making Lab, University of Toronto

A renewed emphasis on participatory forms of digitally-mediated production is transforming our social landscape. ‘Making’ has become the dominant metaphor for a variety of digital and digitally-mediated practices. The web is exploding with independently produced digital ‘content’ such as video diaries, conversations, stories, software, music, video games—all of which are further transformed and morphed by “modders,” “hackers,” artists and activists who redeploy and repurpose corporately-produced content. Equally, communities of self-organized crafters, hackers, and enthusiasts are increasingly to be found online exchanging sewing and knitting patterns, technical guides, circuit layouts, detailed electronics tutorials and other forms of instruction and support. Many of these individuals and collaborators understand their work to be socially interventionist. Through practices of design, development, and exchange they challenge traditional divides between production and consumption and to redress the power differentials built into technologically-mediated societies.

“DIY Citizenship” invokes the participatory nature of these diverse “do-it-yourself” modes of engagement, community, networks, and tools—all of which arguably replace traditional with remediated notions of citizenship. The term “critical making” refers to the increasing role ‘making’ plays in critical forms of social reflection and engagement.

This interactive conference seeks to extend conversations about new modes of engaged DIY citizenship and politics evidenced by the exponential increase of DIY media, “user-generators”, “prosumers,” “hacktivists,” tactical media interventionists, and other ‘maker’ identities. We invite scholars, activists, artists, designers, programmers and others interested in the social and participatory dimensions of digitally-mediated practices, to engage in dialogue across disciplinary and professional divides. All methodological and theoretical approaches are welcomed. Submissions may include paper proposals, works of art and/or design, short video or audio segments, performances, video games, digital media, or other genres and forms. Potential topics include: the relation between social media and the ‘making’ of new forms of citizenship engagement—thus, for example, making movements; making community; making news; making play; making bodies; making health; making public; making education; making networks.

For the full conference call, see:
http://diycitizenship.com/