Ethnography.com – Page 19 – ~ a group blog on a variety of topics related to anthropology, sociology, and ordinary people ~

Kennewick Man Sighted Buying Groceries in Virginia

Posted on March 6, 2015March 6, 2015 by Cindy

by Cynthia van Gilder

Most everyone in the anthropological community is familiar with the controversial human skeletal find known as Kennewick Man. Discovered in 1996 by some hikers on the Columbia River, Washington, Kennewick Man was initially identified as a 19th century Euro-American settler, but closer inspection revealed a projectile point embedded in his pelvis that was common about 9,000 years ago, a date that radiocarbon dating later confirmed. In short, Kennewick Man sparked an epic controversy around two primary topics: 1) who should have legal stewardship of the remains; and 2) what was “Kenne’s” race.…

Where Have You Gone Robert Redford?

Posted on March 5, 2015March 4, 2015 by Tony Waters

I lived in Thailand as a young Peace Corps Volunteer in the early 1980s. To learn Thai, I would go into small local restaurants where I would sit at a table. As a lone single foreigner, my presence raised curiosity of the people working at the restaurants, or other patrons. Oftentimes is was a 30 or 40 year old woman who owned the stall, and made their living selling bowls of noodle soup. …

What Happened to Marc Thompson?

Posted on March 4, 2015September 3, 2015 by Julie Garza-Withers

Yesterday was the six-month anniversary of my friend Marc Thompson’s murder. Marc was a good friend of mine and a former Sociology student. A few years ago, we made a documentary together called If These Halls Could Talk. The movie also starred our mutual friend Joe Rogers. Like Marc, Joe is a Soc major and in addition to everything else he does writes for The Orion, the independent student newspaper at CSU, Chico; Marc would’ve graduated from there this last December with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology.…

Leaky First Graders, Defiant Teenagers, Jocks, and Nerds

Posted on March 3, 2015March 3, 2015 by Tony Waters

A review of my 2012 book Schooling, Childhood, and Bureaucracy: Bureaucratizing the Child was just published in Contemporary Sociology. The book review was generally pretty nice—so I recommend people read it (sorry to non-university people, it’s mostly behind a paywall). The reviewer highlighted Chapter 4 which is about child development in the context of standardized school grades as being particularly noteworthy. Here is a brief extract from that chapter. You can read a pre-publication version of Chapter 1 here.…

Mission Statements: Elite Harvard, Middle-Class Chico, and Working-Class Butte College

Posted on February 27, 2015February 27, 2015 by Tony Waters

Schooling Childhood Cover

Education is an inherent paradox. At its most explicit, it assumes that students are trained for a fair, meritocratic, and competitive labor market in which learning is valued without reference to who they are or their social connections. This is why fair markets are “anonymous”….

But schools do not operate in anonymous markets. Schools emphasizing the visible honors of academic achievement, teacher-student relationships, are often the opposite. The tensions between the utility of skills in an anonymous labor market while monopolizing the distribution of visible status honors in the broader community is at the heart of the educational enterprise (see Weber 1920/2010).…

Gallows Tale V: Did Tanganyika’s Hangmen Go on Strike in 1924-1926?

Posted on February 26, 2015February 25, 2015 by Tony Waters

Gallows File I The Extra “Whack”

Gallows File II Escape?

Gallows File III Are We Hanging the Right Man?

Gallows File IV The Advantages of Executing Locally!

Gallows File V: Did Tanganyika’s Hangmen Go on Strike?

It must be remembered that quite apart from the question of gallows, the difficulty of persons to carry out the executions is exceedingly acute. A great number of people have the greatest abhorrence of the job, and no compulsion can be used where there is any conscientious objection.

…

National Adjunct Walkout Day #NAWD

Posted on February 25, 2015February 26, 2015 by Julie Garza-Withers

I started adjuncting in spring 2006, about two weeks after turning in my MA thesis at California State University, Chico. I was hired to teach sociology by an Anthropology professor I’d taken in grad school who was also the chair of the social and behavioral sciences (SBS) department at Butte Community College. I reread my journal from that time and oh man, I was so happy to have a job right out of grad school.…

The Ultimate Privilege

Posted on February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 by Marianne Paiva

My mother would have called me a picky eater, if the term had been popular when I was a kid in the early 1980s; instead, people often said I was spoiled. I turned my nose up to onions, didn’t care for orange juice, and had a physical aversion to ground meat (that was my mother’s fault, though; she brainwashed me to believe, from a very young age, that ground meat was dirty).…

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 PhD as an Existential Question???

Posted on February 22, 2015February 22, 2015 by Tony Waters

Originally published here at e.com in August 2012.

To PhD or not to PhD, that is that a question for you? Well, at Ethnography.com we have years of unsolicited advice to those of wondering if all the uncertainties of grad school are for you or not.

For example those of you have lousy grades for any number of reasons, and question not your own capacity, but that of your chosen profession to give your application a second look, check out “Can Bad Grades and Graduate School Go Together?…

Of the Passing of the First-Born by W. E. B. DuBois

Posted on February 21, 2015February 21, 2015 by Tony Waters

Editor’s Note: W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963) published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. It is a classic with respect to both general social theory, and race relations. Here is reposted one of the most important of the stories in that book “Of the Passing of the First-Born” about the death of DuBois infant son Burghardt. We of course recommend you read the whole book–it is in the public domain, and readily available on-line. …

Ethnography, Stigma, and Protecting a Potentially Spoiled Identity

Posted on February 20, 2015February 18, 2015 by Tony Waters

Originally published here at e.com in April 2007. It’s one of my favorites and still makes me laugh out loud, I hope you enjoy it too. -Julie

This blog is about why ethnographer Erving Goffman’s observation of stigma are important not just to ex-cons, but also to professors like me on foreign exchange programs. Goffman, as many sociologists and anthropologists know, observed the maneuvers of the marginalized and stigmatized in society, and then wrote about how they thought about their disability.…