~ a group blog on a variety of topics related to anthropology, sociology, and ordinary people ~
Sweet Salvation was originally published at www.norcalblogs.com.
December 2006, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
There are three facts that exist on the southern tip of Baja Mexico: 1) this is a desert, 2) until very recently, even though the entire area is surrounded by ocean, there was very little drinking water here, and 3) it is desperately cut off from the rest of the world.
We arrive at Los Cabos International airport early in the afternoon.…
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. …
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. …
This is a story about the nature of law, what is like to feel like an outsider in court. It is about laws of liability which are rational, reasonable, and legtimate by local standards. However, as I think that the following example shows, such assumptions about liability and law are always embedded in the unspoken culture that is the epistemology which gives cultural life meaning.
The encounter discussed below took place in Tanzania in 1986 when I was working for the Lutheran World Federation’s refugee development programs. …
File this one under…I don’t know what. My story begins with the desire to get cheap airplane tickets to visit our family in Germany this winter. Simple: Leave at an uncomfortable hour, fly Christmas Eve, save $200 per ticket, and still arrive at Grandma’s in time for Christmas breakfast. Anyway, we arrived at the Sacramento airport, produced tickets, passports, and so forth, and off we were to Chicago. In Chicago, out came the boarding pass, our passports were scanned again, and last flight was off to Frankfurt am Main. …
I was reminded of the importance of foreign language learning twice in the last week or so. This morning I read a commentary in the New York Times about how poorly Americans do at foreign languages. Several of the authors remind us that Americans have long done poorly at foreign language learning, and that demands for foreign language learning are declining in the United States, despite attempts by the Chinese government (and others) to get Americans into language classes.…
I met Roger, a master carver, while staying at Nugget City, Yukon. Enjoy!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRS2gfXd9MI
…Dave is a fellow I met in a local bar in Pemberton, BC and agreed to be my first interview, its just took some time to get it together!
…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.…
