One of my favorite all-time historical novels is The Deceivers by John Masters. Published in 1952, the protagonist William Savage is an administrator in a remote district for the British East Indian Company. The book is set in 1825. Savage speaks four Indian languages, and has spent 19 years in the colonial service. As a colonial administrator, he is “the law” in his district. But to do this, he lives in an Indian village, embedded in Indian cultures and languages.…
Author: Tony Waters
Pete Seeger Sings Classical Social Theory
Classical Sociology is typically considered to be a course about the three “classics” of sociology who are Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and W. E. B. DuBois. Marx tells us why capitalism and materialism is important for organizing society, Weber explains that the spirit of capitalism and a religious-like ethic in uniformity which he calls “rationality.” As for Durkheim, he actually explains what religion and morality are, as well as why it is important to have “deviants” who will mark out the boundaries to society of what is moral.…
AAA Issues Report on Human Terrain Teams
The American Anthropological Association has issued a report on the Human Terrain Team experiment that the military has undertaken. The report is nuanced and thoughtful, and I recommend that interested people have a look here. AAA Report on Human Terrain Teams
Judging from my admittedly quick read, studies about the use of anthropology are now moving beyond blow-torch advocacy of one position or the other, and acknowledging the ethical dilemmas created when contracting, military action, and academics mix. …
The Problem with Valedictorians
Every May, colleges trot out their straight-A students to give valedictory speeches. These are the unusual students who made their way through a complicated system, complying with the diverse, often obscure, and even arbitrary wants of a variety of professors, without tripping or stumbling. This is a difficult task and worthy of admiration.
As for the words themselves, the typical valedictory speech asserts that life is about accepting challenges and the role of determination in success.…
David, Goliath, Charlie Wilson’s War, and American Culture
The film “Charlie Wilson’s War” is about an American Congressman who in the 1980s organized the clandestine funding to fight the Russian Occupation of Afghanistan. Wilson arranged for over $1 billion to be sent to Afghan groups fighting the Russians on the idea that anyone who would fight the United States’ Cold War enemy was America’s friend, including the admittedly courageous fighters who would later become Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and who got their start on large dollops of money Congressman Wilson sent their way.…
Singing in Sociology Class
Occasionally I break into song, particularly when teaching my Classical Sociology class. Classical sociologists Max Weber, and W. E. B. DuBois wrote about the importance of music in defining group boundaries. In the case of Max Weber, he noted that dominant groups typically have myths and stories which glorify a past of some sort. A great way to illustrate the importance of these songs is to break into song in a fashion that illustrates the the stories that separate the dominant from the subordinate.…
The Funny Worlds of Our Meritocrats
The meritocracy is a ideology that is too often known for its failures, rather than its strengths. Cindy Van Gilder noted this on this blog. And if that’s not enough, I am reading The Price of Admission by Wall Street Journal Reporter Daniel Golden which demonstrates that the most meritocratic of America’s universities—those at the top of the US News and World Report list—maintain admissions offices that are carefully structured to favor the already privilege, including well-heeled donors, the powerful, alumni, the wealthy, and celebrity.…
Goodbye Germany, Hello Chico
Last year I took a break from my regular job teaching Chico State undergraduates, and taught graduate students at a private university in Germany. Classes were tiny, students hard-working, and engaged in the esoterica of social theory. I really liked it a lot. One of my students even managed to get a book review published in an important sociology journal, Sociological Review from the UK. Every essay, from all 14 students per semester, started with a concise outline, and the entire essay was carefully divided into an Introduction, Body, and Conclusion.…
Whining about Practitioners
Mark Dawson has touched on a common whine of “practitioners” about academics whose research is not “good” for anything, at least not good for anything they want. This is a common complaint in which so-called practitioners (as if academics don’t “practice” anything), who assert that if it ain’t good for achieving their policy goals they have already concluded are important anyway, it shouldn’t be done.
But, too often the demand for research in policy making circles is what Stephen Jay Gould once criticized as “advocacy masquerading as objectivity.”…
Something about Homecomings and The Innocent Anthropologist by Nigel Barley
One of my favorite anthropology books is The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut by Nigel Barley. It is a memorably written story of Barley’s experience doing fieldwork in rural Cameroon. The strength of the book is that it includes the personal problems that emerge out of the frustrations, boredom, tribulations, and mis-interpretations that emerge in the context of “doing ethnography.” In this sense it is much different than the dispassionate, theoretical, and scientific ethnography typically assigned undergraduates in which the ethnographer somehow always ends up being always erudite, and insightful. …
US Embassy in Germany Protects Americans from Soccer Fans Armed with Bratwurst
Tonight is the semi-final Euro-cup match between Germany and Turkey. People here in Germany really like soccer, and do things like watch it on outside screenings. But the US Embassy is on its toes! Americans in Germany are warned that such sporting events can result in boisterous behavior, and even a fight now and then. At a minimum, the US Embassy tells us, such events can result in bad things like traffic jams!…
High Schools and Declensionist Narratives
Years ago at a conference, I heard a paper about “declensionist narratives. “ Declensionist narratives are the stories we tell each other about how/why today is an even bigger mess than the past. Since most people prefer complaining to praising, such narratives are quite common. They include your uncle who talks about how kids were more obedient in the old days, newspaper reporters who claim that a new type of “super-predator” has emerged in the ghetto, and teachers who claim that today’s student are more defiant or stupid than those during the good ol’days. …