Adam Fish at SavageMinds.org has written about the problem conferences and conference fees. He asks whether they are really worth it for graduate students in particular—many grad students are told by their major professors that conferences are necessary for networking. I share Adam’s doubts, though. Hiring for tenure track academic jobs is done by hiring committees with the approval of deans and provosts who are not at the conference. Few if any decisions are made at the conference “job fairs.” …
Author: Tony Waters
Tony Waters is czar and editor of Ethnography.com. He came to us from the Sociology department at California State University at Chico where he has been a professor since 1996. In 2016 though he suddenly found himself with a new gig at Payap University in northern Thailand where he is on the faculty of the Peace Studies Department. He has also been a guest professor in Germany, and Tanzania. In the past, his main interests have been international development and refugees in Thailand, Tanzania, and California. This reflects a former career in the Peace Corps (Thailand), and refugee camps (Thailand and Tanzania). His books include: Crime and Immigrant Youth (1999), Bureaucratizing the Good Samaritan (2001), The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture: Life Beneath of the Marketplace (2007), When Killing is a Crime (2007), and Schooling, Bureaucracy, and Childhood: Bureaucratizing the Child (2012). His hobby is trying to learn strange languages–and the mistakes that that implies. Tony is a prolific academic, you can read more of his work at academia.edu.or purchase one (or more!) of his books from Amazon.com.
Ethnography and Russian Israelis in Tel Aviv: Getting Reluctant People to Speak
by Daiva Repeckaite
Guest blogger Daiva Repeckaite is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social and
Cultural Anthropology, VU University Amsterdam. Her thesis research is
on networking practices and ideas about citizenship of Russian-speaking
Israelis, particularly those living in poorer areas in Tel Aviv. Daiva
has carried out her first fieldwork in Israel for eight months in
2009-2010, and is currently in Tel Aviv to do additional interviews and
participant observations.…
Here’s Why Jared Diamond is Irrelevant to Anthropology
As I discussed in a previous post, the blogosphere is atwitter (pun intended) about Jared Diamond’s new book The World before Yesterday. It seems his press agent got him some good publicity on NPR and National Geographic, both outlets which Anthropology PhDs apparently pay attention to. And guess what: Anthropologists don’t like The World Before Yesterday; check out the comment streams at SavageMinds.Org, anthropologyreport.com, or any number of other anthropology blogs. …
Did Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) Seven Practices of Good Undergraduate Education Dumb Down American Education? A View from Germany
I just finished my semester teaching as a Guest Professor at Leuphana University in Germany, and am beginning to figure out an answer to a question I get asked frequently: “What is the difference between American and German universities?” Actually, the German students who have been exchange students in the United States have helped me along. They say:
…In American universities, there’s lots of assignments, busy work really, and the students are not expected to take responsibility for their own learning.
Why Does Anthropology Worry about Jared Diamond when they have Nigel Barley?
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. …
Writing Against Identity Politics: An Essay on Gender, Race, and Bureaucratic Pain,” in the latest issue of American Ethnologist
Smadar Lavie’s essay, “Writing Against Identity Politics: An Essay on Gender, Race, and Bureaucratic Pain,” appears in the latest issue of American Ethnologist (Volume 39, Issue 4). The essay focuses on Israel’s single mothers on welfare who are Mizrahi—Jews with origins in the Muslim World. Here is its abstract: Equating bureaucratic entanglements with pain—or what, arguably, can be seen as torture—might seem strange. But for single Mizrahi welfare mothers in Israel, somatization of bureaucratic logic as physical pain precludes the agency of identity politics.…
World’s Storehouse of Anthropological Knowledge Safe from Mayan Apocalypse!
As frequent readers of Ethnography.com (if there is such a thing) know, our esteemed founder Mark Dawson has disappeared from these pages after last posting on April 1, 2012. Amazingly, he has even disappeared from the internet. But as exclusively reported , AAA has hired him, and he is on a top-secret mission to save anthropology from the Mayan Apocalypse which is scheduled for–tomorrow, December 21, 2012.
As interim editor of ethnography.com,…
Mental Illness and Graduate School Programs Across the Nation
Can getting a master’s degree help your career outlook? Or is it more of a drain on your mental outlook? These are the questions education analyst Bree Hernandez explores in the next article.
Today’s university students have more to balance than ever before, and Bree’s blog profiles many of the competing pulls. Still, the mental health and psychological well-being of students is not often addressed in enough detail. Bree’s piece seeks to spark discussion on this important topic.…
Thoughts about Farmer Power and Development Bureaucrats
What is the relationships between the subsistence farmers and the bureaucrats of the World Bank, USAID, DFID, JICA, and the host of government-sponsored development aid projects? Such projects are sponsored by clever, well-educated, powerful, and wealthy people. And yet they often fail—and the clever powerful people turn around and blame the subsistence farmer.
But I do not think that this is the whole story. The broader question is how do the impoverished farmers manage to frustrate the smart rich people who have degrees so consistently? …
What is it a police problem, and what is it a military problem? Musings as the war in Afghanistan (finally) winds down
I think that there is a difference between the nature of policing and the military rooted in the nature of legitimacy and emotions, specifically the emotion of fear.
But does the US government in fighting in Afghanistan really understand this too? See the discussion at CurrentIntelligence.net, where I posted “Differentiating Between Police and Military Action.” Find out what terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, the DC sniper, and the Unabomber all have in common.…
Those Pesky “Bad Grades” and “Can I Ever Get into Grad School?”
Ever worry about how those Cs you had as a sophomore would look on a grad school application? Or maybe a D?
Worried because every grad school says “we only take the best,” or some such nonsense (look, no one can take the “best,” even if there is such a thing).
Ever wonder how long those bad grades can follow you through an otherwise fascinating and enriching career in “the real world.” …
A Bit about http://educationalanthropolicy.org!
Jill Koyama from Educational Anthropolicy, a website created by Jill P. Koyama of SUNY Buffalo. Like many anthropologists, she is pushing into educational issues here in the United States, and around the world. She is a sociocultural anthropologist committed to providing a public platform in which anthropologists, educators, and students can engage.
Tony Waters is czar and editor of Ethnography.com. He came to us from the Sociology department at California State University at Chico where he has been a professor since 1996.