We spent the 2nd Day of Christmas (December 26) at the home of German friends. There I was asked what I thought about the film “Dinner for One,” a film where a 90 year-old woman is served a birthday dinner by her butler. I’d never hear of it. Turns out it is an 11 minute long British film (in English) from the 1960s which has something of a cult-following in Germany, as well as a few other northern European countries.…
The Verb “To Chill”
Most Americans know of the common English slang „to chill.“ It is clearly a verb, and used to describe teenagers what teenagers do when they go somewhere together. My understanding of chilling is that it is something you do with friends, it is unplanned, and you do low key sort of things like lie on a couch, talk, watch videos, play games, and eat doritos.
My daughter Kirsten came home from her German school yesterday to tell me that she had learned a new adjective at school “chillig” which is a borrowing from English of the word “to chill” but with the German adjectival ending making it into the English equivalent of “chill-ish.”.…
Home for the Holidays
The Arrival Scene is a trope of classic anthropological literature. In invoking the beginning of the anthropologist’s journey among a specific people, a specific landscape is invariably described. Doing so is more than an attempt to hook the reader—writing these scenes also hooks the anthropologist back into the field experience. That moment, conjured in narrative, when the anthropologist is confronted with the people and place they have decided to make familiar, is also when the anthropologist begins their attempt to feel at home in an unfamiliar place.…
Will consult for food
I have not been posting much recently. This is because I have been laying the plans to leave my current position at Jump Associates at the end of January to start a new path far away from the business of design and strategy. I have noticed I need a radical career change every 8 to 10 years. I am going to be doing a bit of independent consulting before my next gig.…
Teaching Tales (Episode II)
That’s right – I changed my unit of analysis from a “part” to an “episode.” Those of you who teach, especially in the world of small, highly interactive classrooms full of undergraduates, will understand that the experience is enough like a sitcom to warrant the analogy.
Today’s episode took place in my senior capstone Anthropological Theory seminar during the final class meeting. We were munching on local delicacies such as shrimp tacos, carnitas tortas, and enchiladas verde, when students asked me to talk more about “that HTS controversy” and the AAA’s.…
Many Random Things on my Mind
I am intrigued by what seems to be a persistent pattern among my peers, one that seems to render them unlikely (not to say incapable) of thinking anthropologically about their own lives, and careers. I am frustrated by the number of times I’ve had the, “go ahead and submit that article you are sitting on, what are you waiting for,” conversation with my fellow women in anthropology. Did they not remember that article submission (among other things in our profession) can still be highly gendered, and that men tend to send stuff off because “it’s great,” and women tend to send the same quality of stuff off much less often, because it “needs some more work”—and then gets lost in the shuffle, and never gets sent out at all. …
Really Nice Strangers
I have traveled quite a bit in the last few months. In June I was in Thailand about ten days, and I have been living in Germany since August. During this time, I have had the usual mix-ups that go with traveling—missing trains, wandering off in unforeseen circumstances, and just generally misplacing stuff. Generally people are pretty nice about these things. Indeed, I just met “met” my third really nice stranger in these travels, so I guess it is time to acknowledge them.…
Well, at least the AAA meeting gave me some perspective
I didn’t say it was a happy one, but it is a perspective. Of course there were the expected strident calls of moral outrage over anthropologists in the military. Then it got worse when a voice vote was taken and passed that “no reports should be provided to sponsors [of research] that are not also available to the general public and, where practicable, to the population studied.” (from the Chronicle of Higher Ed.…
Teaching Tales (Part I)
Yesterday I walked into the classroom of my Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology class and passed two young women deeply engaged in an animated discussion. The snippet I overheard was part of a recounted conversation: “…and I was all, ‘Geeze, she’s your professor!!’ I mean seriously, would it kill him to codeswitch? It’s just stupid…” Her conversational partner was nodding affirmatively in shared disdain.
Don’t you love it when the anthropology actually takes?!…
Living in Exponential Times
I promise I won’t post youtube videos with every single post (haha). However, this time I will. One of my professors posted this video on our blackboard discussion board and I found it really interesting. There is also a wikispace that further discusses the statements made in the video. If all the statements made were statistically sound, then my generation and future generations are in for some really amazing changes. That statement might make you say “duh” but seeing it in numbers and within some sort of timeline makes the point really hit home.…
It’s time again for the Ig Nobel Awards….
Every year, the Journal of Improbable Research hosts the wonderful Ig Noble Awards for research that makes you laugh and then think. The Ig Nobles have all the usual areas such as peace, aviation, linguistics and of course, chickens. The ceremony also includes winning a date with a noble laureate, and the 24/7 lectures. In the 24/7 lecture series, established scientists have 24 seconds to give a technical explanation of their scientific field.…
Human Terrain System: Too Little, Too Late, and So What?
Ok, Mark Dawson finally wrote often enough about the Human Terrain System for me to investigate what this military program actually is. I have some sympathy for the idea of using anthropology in the military because I have seen too many anthropologically incorrect lieutenants proclaiming to the press something along the lines of “You gotta be here to understand the bad guys. All the bad guys understand is strength/power/force/money. It is just their culture.…