Mass Media/Pop Culture – Ethnography.com

What Happens if Chinese Smartphones Teach English Lessons in Tanzania?

Posted on October 7, 2022November 6, 2022 by Christina Lauren Quigley

English is the dominant global language of the world, it is the language of power, and control. But it is not the only language, and different people have different levels of command over the use of the same language. It is interesting to watch how this happens, often in unexpected ways, for example by the arrival of Chinese cell phones here in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

I recently bought the cheapest smartphone I could find, when it seemed my primary phone had been burned by excess voltage coming out of the electrical sockets in rural/provincial Tanzania (Kigoma).…

Rumba is good, even through war, through Ebola

Posted on September 15, 2019April 3, 2022 by Christina Lauren Quigley

Since returning to Kigoma, Tanzania on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in central Africa for my Fulbright research, I have been looking for two of my Congolese friends. I was told that they crossed the Lake, and returned to two of the cities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to live– to be together with their family and relatives.

People should not be reduced only to suffering, and narratives only to exodus, which I recognized in my anthropology classes at California State University, Chico. …

Johnny Cash on the Importance of Listening to Your Mama about Open Carry of Guns

Posted on July 17, 2016July 16, 2016 by Tony Waters

In my Criminology class, I used to lecture about “ecological theories” of crime. For example, the “ecology of bars” lend themselves to violence. Basically, ecological theory says that if you put together young males, alcohol, and guns, someone is more likely to get hurt than if any one of the tree elements is removed. Remove any one of the three, and the danger goes down. Which is why the youngest males are not allowed in bars, there are hours after which alcohol is no longer served, and you are to leave your guns outside the bar. …

Here is Why You Should Not Listen to Popular Music–But Will Anyway!

Posted on October 15, 2015October 14, 2015 by Tony Waters

One of my favorite sociological essays is Teodor Adorno’s 1941 “On Popular Music.” Adorno didn’t much like the popular music he heard on the radio in Los Angeles, and said so. He found it simplistic, monotonous, limited and manipulative. With an emphasis on manipulative. For besides being a classically trained musician, Adorno was also a leading critic of capitalism, and especially its need for endless consumption so that large corporations could generate profits.…

Money Changes Everything: The Ascent of Walter White

Posted on March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 by Julie Garza-Withers

Have you been watching the Breaking Bad prequel, Better Call Saul? I have and I love it. I swear, Vince Gilligan is a modern-day Rod Serling, nobody since Serling’s Twilight Zone has been able to create a morality play like Mr. Gilligan and his crew (the general theme: “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it”). I’ve been a fan of Gilligan’s since the nineties, when X-Files was the go-to show for weekly weirdness and cultural commentary.…

The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 4

Posted on February 23, 2015February 23, 2015 by Tony Waters

The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 4

A Ghostly Play in Five Acts

Featuring

Karl Marx, of London, England

Max Weber, of Heidelberg, Germany

Emile Durkheim of Paris, France

W.E.B. DuBois of Atlanta, USA

Special Guest Appearance

Charles Dickens of London

As Narrated to Jerri Bedwell of California, USA

Act 4

Funerals

or

…Strictly in a business point of view… (A Christmas Carol)

This perhaps the most haunting part of our tale when Scrooge, who by now we have come to sympathize with, learns what a mess he has made of his life and what his impact on others has been.…

The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 3

Posted on February 16, 2015February 23, 2015 by Tony Waters

The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 3

A Ghostly Play in Five Acts

Featuring

Karl Marx, of London, England

Max Weber, of Heidelberg, Germany

Emile Durkheim of Paris, France

W.E.B. DuBois of Atlanta, USA

Special Guest Appearance

Charles Dickens of London

As Narrated to Jerri Bedwell of California, USA

Act 3

Fatherly Reminisces

or

If These Shadows Persist… (The Ghost of Christmas Present)

“Before we begin again, Charles, Mr.…

The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 2

Posted on February 9, 2015February 23, 2015 by Tony Waters

The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part 2

A Ghostly Play in Five Acts

Featuring

Karl Marx, of London, England

Max Weber, of Heidelberg, Germany

Emile Durkheim of Paris, France

W.E.B. DuBois of Atlanta, USA

Special Guest Appearance

Charles Dickens of London

As Narrated to Jerri Bedwell of California, USA

Act 2

This Matter of Love, Money, and Class

or

“These are but shadows of things that have been.”…

The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience, Part I

Posted on February 2, 2015February 9, 2015 by Tony Waters

The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience

Part 2 is here

A Ghostly Play in Five Acts

Featuring

Karl Marx, of London, England

Max Weber, of Heidelberg, Germany

Emile Durkheim of Paris, France

W.E.B. DuBois of Atlanta, USA

Special Guest Appearance

Charles Dickens of London

As Narrated to Jerri Bedwell of California, USA

Welcome to the Parlor of the Ghosts of The Order of the Eternal Social Conscience

We have entered a world separate from Earth — a world where time is irrelevant, and philosophers mingle with writers and poets, with each made the wiser for it.…

The Best Book of the 21st Century (so far)

Posted on January 26, 2015January 26, 2015 by Julie Garza-Withers

It’s Monday and I don’t know what you did this weekend but I finished one book (Americanah) and started another (Descent). Since I quit teaching, reading has returned as my favorite thing to do. I always had the time but never took it, something about the frenzy of teaching that made it so I could only make time to read books I wanted to during the summer. Several summers ago I read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.…

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.…

Money Changes Everything: The Ascent of Walter White

Posted on October 28, 2014October 29, 2014 by Julie Garza-Withers

“I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it, and I was alive.” –W.W.

I had to wait until the finale of Breaking Bad but at last, Walter White admitted that he was in to the meth cooking for the money. I’ve been frustrated since season 3, by that time the whole, “I’m doing it for the family” thing seemed like a bunch of baloney, the manipulative excuse of a mediocre middle class guy in the throes of power grabbing; a chance to feel “alive” after a lifetime of playing it safe for fear of what “might happen, might not happen.”…