The EPIC conference is fast approaching and thanks in part to Ethnography.com I’ll be on my way to Denmark at the end of next week to attend the EPIC conference at the University of Copenhagen. I am excited and nervous about the trip! It is my first time traveling to Europe and only my second international trip. I’m excited because this is the first conference of this kind that I will be attending, and I expect that I will learn a lot about new and different ways that ethnographic research is being used, how people are successfully presenting their ideas and research, and of course I hope to learn a thing or two about the Danish. I look forward to being around creative and innovative people. Being in a creative environment always helps spark ideas in my own mind. I am nervous because travel plans just never seem to pan out the way they are supposed to! *knock on wood* After the conference I’m heading over to Paris, France to check out the sights there and to visit a friend who is currently working on her Masters in French History.

I’ve obviously been a bit absent from posting on Ethnography.com so I guess a bit of an update might be due for those who were wondering. I graduated with my degree in anthropology and history in May, and have continued to work as office manager of a non-profit organization. I thought I’d have more free time after classes were over, but it has been one project after another! My latest project has been submitting my applications for a Master in Business program.

I look forward to blogging my EPIC experience! If anyone else is attending please contact me!

As somebody who is going through same major transitions in life, I’ve been thinking about how important mentors are in one’s life. I would bet there are very few people in this world who truly believe that they got where they are in life completely alone. As in my case, there are many different people throughout our lives who could be considered “mentors” because they’ve taken some of their valuable time and donated it to someone else’s well-being.

Luckily, I’ve had many different people mentor me in a variety of environments and who continue to do so. I am sure that I would not be the same person without their guidance and I am always appreciative to those who reach out. I find that each one of these mentors bring valuable life experiences and resources with them, which, even by simply hearing their personal stories or experiences, help me to keep my mind open and see past potential road blocks. It helps to know, when things get difficult, that there are others who have made it through similar situations successfully and who have proven that the bar can and should be continuously raised. Mentors are not meant to make things easy or hand you an answer, but they can give you that extra little push, boost of confidence, or valuable resource that can make a difference.

Although mentor-mentee relationships are often informal, with the mentor taking their own initiative to help their student in a time of need or uncertainty, an organized program such as the Entrepreneur Mentorship program at California State University, Fresno can also provide an incomparable opportunity to learn from others. As a participant of this program, I have had the opportunity to contact, interview, and learn from a wide variety of the Central Valley’s most successful entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers. Each week one of these people offer their time to speak to our class about their successes, failures, and life stories. Through their stories, leadership recommendations, words of advice and encouragement, the students have collectively expressed, and I do concur, that a certain confidence is gained. The different lifestyles and level of success of these mentors seemed so foreign to most, if not all, the students in the beginning of the school year. As we edge closer to the end of the year and the class was asked to reflect on our experiences, it was unanimously agreed that it seemed as if the mentors’ willingness to share their stories and to allow us to see that they are human (through their experiences) and therefore not so different after all, has helped us along in our on-going transitions from students to teachers, dreamers to doers, consumers to creators, and from followers to leaders.

Whether formally organized in an on-going academic program, a work relationship, student-teacher relationship, or other, the positive influence that a mentor can have can not be overstated. I thank all of the mentors in my life, your time and effort is noticed and appreciated.

I went to a workshop Friday in which anthropological involvement with the German military in Afghanistan was described. The German army is participating in the NATO operation in northern Afghanistan, which is in one of the more peaceful areas of that country. An ethnologist, Dr. Monika Lanik reported on the difficulties in developing inter-cultural competence in the context of deployments. Ethnographic competence is considered important because the German military is taking on a new international character as a result of peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan, and the former Yugoslavia. Dr. Lanik pointed out that this is as much a diplomatic function as a military one. As a result, this new type of military operation requires diplomatic skills which in turn implies ethnography.

In the case of Afghanistan, German military have provincial reconstruction teams. This context requires soldiers to be aware of patronage relationship, the context of the drug trade, and modern versus traditional values. Dr. Lanik noted that awareness of such “deep play” goes well beyond the simpler tasks involving the recognition of ethnic symbols, or actions likely to accidentally give offense. Rather it reflects a need to focus on the deeper context that culture provides for not only a peacekeeping, but economic development.

The ethnographic training of German military personnel asks them to recognize the context that their own culture provides in what they are trying to accomplish. As in any military, both military and national culture is inter-twined and taken for granted by the soldiers. In such a context, a job for the ethnographer is to ask soldiers what part of their world view is a consequence of their military training, what part is a result of German culture, what emerges out of their personal biography, and finally what is brought by the local culture? As in any culture, there are naïve assumptions that home culture is universal, and can be imputed to the people with whom they will negotiate. The job of the ethnologist is much the same as it is with any institution—train and teach for inter-cultural competence.

There is controversy associated with the German mission in Afghanistan. The German mission in Afghanistan is itself politically controversial in a country which sees its military as strictly for domestic defensive purposes. How long the German forces should stay in Afghanistan is an on-going political question raised frequently in the German Parliament.

Some German anthropologists also raise the issue of whether anthropologists should be involved with the military at all, even though the German military is focused strictly on defensive purposes. As in the United States, it is framed as a question of professional ethics—and the question is asked whether providing ethnographic advice is appropriate at all.

            This is the first semester of the Engineering for Peoples and Markets Program at Fresno State. The program consists of two teams. Each team consists of two or three engineer majors (computer and electrical), an entrepreneurship major, and an anthropology major. The purpose of our team is to work together on the creation, design, and marketability of a piece of technology created by the engineers for their senior projects. It has been interesting discovering each of our roles within this project, and the experience of working with people trained in different fields has been valuable.  There have definitely been some learning hurdles for me, and things I’m still working on. Some things that I initially saw as hurdles, I’m beginning to realize might be more common than I thought.

            Our project is very dependent on the curriculum of the engineer majors because this is their senior project and they must create a working prototype by the end of the school year in order to graduate. I originally saw this as an obstacle that would only exist in a college program like this one. Due to the attachment of the project to their pending graduation, I felt like the engineers were very cautious, sometimes only focusing on simply getting a very basic working apparatus, rather than a prototype that was more representative of our team’s research and design recommendations. Everything seemed to be contingent on “if we end up commercializing it”, rather than “let’s give this a try”. Their apprehensions are certainly understandable!

Now, as I think about the situation in a different light, I’m thinking this may be a lot closer to what I may experience in the future when working in consultation with other people or companies. Time and resources are always a major concern. Rather than seeing this as an obstacle needing to be removed, I see it as a learning challenge on my part on how to create a good communicative environment with the team and try to represent my research and recommendations in ways that will also include possible solutions on how to address time sensitivity and limited resources. I certainly do not have an answer to this, but it is a constant learning experience for me.

I tried researching “inter-disciplinary teams” online to find out examples of how other teams are working together, at other colleges and within business and organizations. The only articles I could find were regarding inter-disciplinary teams working together within the medical field. I’m wondering if there are other resources where I can find articles relating to this, and examples of how similar programs are operating at other universities.

About 10 months ago I joined www.kiva.org for my first experiment with a micro-loan. If you have not encountered this yet, micro-loans are a growing industry in developing nations all over the world. The idea is quite simple, these are very small loans many less than a few hundred dollars to help someone start or expand a business. They have a remarkably low default rate and 100% of your loan goes to the person in question. It is not charity… it is a loan they have to pay back, and when you read stories about it, there is great social pressure to do so. You don’t have to cover all the loan yourself. With Kiva, you can fund as little or as much of the loan as possible.

I signed up to the tune of $200, to help complete a loan for a woman wanting to expand her clothing store.

Today I was fully repaid, and it was repaid early! With Kiva, you don’t take your money back out. When the loan is repaid, you you can use the credit to make more loans. So I have reinvested in two more people and can keep doing it over an over. A nice little system.

go to http://www.kiva.org