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. …
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.
Dominance and Subordination, Max Weber Style
I am teaching a sociology class in northern Thailand to a group of nine Chico State students who are here for a special summer session. As with most of my sociology classes, I have assigned Max Weber’s classic essay “Classes, Staende, Parties” at an early point in the class. Particularly what Weber writes about what in German is called “Staende” is relevant to Thailand. Staende are the groups we form in which we have loyalty to others in the same group, to whom we are loyal, and share a way of life. …
Who, What, When and Wai?
I was young once in Thailand. I lived here as a 22-25 year old, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and after that working in refugee camps. In these roles, I tried to blend into Thai society as well as possible, despite my long nose, height, blondish hair and the fact that my Thai language tones were far from accentless (or, as my Thai teacher told me last year “three out of five tones—not bad…”).…
Changing Thailand, Not Changing Thailand: Of Water Buffalo, Work Elephants, and Cultural Persistence
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. …
Book Review! Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century
Carol Bohmer and Amy Shuman. Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century. London: Routledge, 2007. 304pp. $39.95 (paper), ISBN: 0415773768.
Citizenship is a tricky concept rooted in the relationship between the individual and her or his government. Citizens have a responsibility to respect the state and what Max Weber called its “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force”; in return, the state guarantees individual rights and respects the right of citizens to participate peacefully in self-government.…
UCLA loses to USC, but is Still Afraid to Challenge Chico State in College Rankings!
It is college ranking season again, sponsored by US News and World Report. Once again, US News left Chico State out of their ranking system, I think because the big kids thought that they would lose if it came to any measure of undergraduate education. After all as I have long asserted, Chico State beats UC Berkeley when it comes to quality of undergraduate teaching; what possible advantage could some university in southern California hope to have over any of us in northern California?! …
Working Class, Upper Class, Community Colleges, and Harvard U.
For anyone interested in social stratification and university systems, Julie Garza-Withers has written “Is the Community College Still the Best Bet for Working Class Students?” over on the “Working Class Perspectives” Blog. This blog raises similar issues to what I wrote about in my essay here “The Sociology of Status Hierarchy and Why I Think Chico State is a Better College than UC Berkeley?” Or more to the point, Garza-Withers’ blog asks why such a premium is put on where you learned something, rather than what you learned? …
China and Wikipedia’s Top 100 Lists
I went to Linyi, China, in June because a chance to teach in Thailand suddenly evaporated due to the May crackdowns on “Red Shirts,” leaving me with under-utilized air tickets. So I asked a colleague to arrange for an invitation to lecture at the University of Linyi, China, in her home town. She has always apologized for her home town, which as a demographer she points out is “not that important” even in Shandong Province which has several cities more important than Linyi. …
Aspirations to Practicing Anthropology are OK!
Rick Holden is a practicing (non-academic) cultural anthropologist who is relatively new to the field. . This is the first in a series of nuts and bolts blogs by Rick about ”leasons learned.” He wants to encourage graduating anthropology students to think about how anthropologists go about making a living ouside of the academy. Tony Waters
Most of what’s written about getting into practicing anthropology is written by well established figures at the end of a successful career, most of whom describe falling into it after receiving their PhD’s and a brief stint in academia.…
Is it Time to Deport the State of Arizona from The United States?
One of the other blogs I participate on is a local one in our local county. There is lots of local politics on the blog, of little interest outside of our little county in California. Except that our Congressman, Tom McClintock, is a national figure. He is the guy who stood up in on the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington to complain when President Felipe Calderon of Mexico told the US that they had a lot of really stupid immigration laws which do not do a lot to regulate immigraton one way or the other. …
Musings about the Theft of Culture from Anthropology
Some years ago, I asked the question, “Who Stole Culture from Anthropology?” in a brief essay in Anthropology News in 2006. I raised the question because many anthropologists had complained to me since about 1987, about how they had trained “too many” anthropologists with the result that they were unemployed. The discipline seemed to be in a perpetual depression, wallowing in its own insecurities, seemingly like no other. This bothered me though, in part I guess because I was a victim of this insecurity. …
Good News from Tanzania!
Here is some good news from a former student at the University of Dar Es Salaam:
“My daughter is growing up, she is now 9 years, though still not able to walk, sit, or talk, It is a very hard task but I am happy to be her mother and she is still my inspiration.
“On top of all that, at last I have been able to meet a man who have decided to spend his life with us, I had problems with men accepting my kid, but this time it seems different and I hope all goes well.…