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. …
Category: Blogs by Tony
Ethnography, Stigma, and Protecting a Potentially Spoiled Identity
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.…
Gallows Tale IV: The Hanging File of Tanganyika, the Financial and Psychological Advantage of Executing Locally!
Bukoba and Mwanza are on the shore of Lake Victoria—and Mwanza was town nearest to the British colonial office and at the time probably the larger of the two cities. As a result in 1922, the police in Bukoba were required to hang the condemned prisoners in Mwanza, which involved having three prison officers transport the prisoner to his execution by the ferries that operated between the cities. In other words, four third class tickets from Bukoba to Mwanza, and three tickets back to Bukoba.…
Children as Raw Material on the Bureaucratic Assembly Line
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Children are the peculiar raw material which schools put on their production line. When they arrive at five years old, they are typically illiterate, innumerate, cannot locate themselves in the national order, and believe in the tooth fairy. As one teacher also noted, they are “leaky” in the sense that they excrete various bodily fluids unexpectedly during the day (Kozol 2007, 84). Thirteen years later, virtually all are literate, some can do calculus, and others volunteer to preserve an abstract national order in the military.
Why we Make Stuff Up at Ethnography.com, and by the way, the American Anthropological Association Decided to Dissolve Itself
Two weeks ago, we posted a really great essay by David Van Huff “A Tale Within a Tale: The Dual Nature of Ebenezer Scrooge.” David wrote this story for my class, and it helped me see Durkheim concept of the “Dual Nature” of humanity in a new way, which is why I wanted to post it. Anyway, in coming days we will post more such stories. What they will have all in common is that they are all fiction.…
Are Police “God’s Representatives on Earth?”
Max Weber writing in the early twentieth century marveled about the advantages that modern societies have over the earlier societies. One of the things Weber remarked about was the “stable peacefulness” that are found in large areas of the country protected by the police. No longer when you, your brother, or your sister were assaulted did you need, or want, to take matters into your own hands and seek your own revenge on behalf of your clan and its gods to whom you were tied to by blood oaths of loyalty.…
Is Your Professor also a Waitress or in Retail?
The crisis in college teaching is old hat on blogs like this. The professoriate is divided into a two tiered system, in which one group-the tenure track-has the good fortune to have job security and a decent salary, while an often-time larger groups has only semester-to-semester job security, and a part-time teaching gig which may or may not pay the bills of a middle class lifestyle.
I was lucky—I only had to do two years of adjuncting before being gifted with the luxury of tenure track security.…
Privilege In Life, Privilege In Death
By: Tony Waters
To provide some broader context about Marc Thompson’s murder…Julie and I talked on the phone last night about two different cases that have been in the newspapers of Butte County, California, recently, where we live. Two years ago, a young man was tragically lost during the annual Labor Day river float–a fun-filled day of drinking and floating by privileged students and their friends from out-of-town, who celebrate the beginning of the school year in Chico. …
As Americans Go to the Polls, Here is a Little Wisdom about Voting Cows from Max Weber
As Americans get ready to vote on November 2 for all range of important stuff, it may help to ruminate a bit on Max Weber’s incisive word “Voting Cows,” Stimmvieh. As you go to the polls, please don’t be like me–
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.
Fatuous, Naïve, or Bold? The Wonderful World of Peer Review
Fair warning from an anonymous peer reviewer of one of my academic articles…
The author is hampered by an inaccurate, naïve, and highly simplistic understanding of the basic principles…which leads him to make ludicrous statements like the following…
Yes, that’s me: inaccurate, naïve, and highly simplistic! And so forth. If you share that sentiment, do not read further.
I posted a blog about peer review for the first time in July 2008 after being pummeled in the peer review process.…
Nicholas Wade, Jared Diamond and Anthropology
Ok, Anthropology, one day after my post on Nicholas Wade, and that post gets more hits than the last five or six posts here put together. I get it, you like Nicholas Wade, and especially complaining about him. You don’t like biological reductionism, and think that such studies are used to reinforce racist ideologies. For what it is worth, I more or less agree.
But for some reason you don’t want to read stuff that critiques biological reductionism on its own terms, and opt for those presented by the anthropology’s favorite bogeymen, which from recent activity in the blogosphere seem to include Nicholas Wade, Jared Diamond, and Razib Khan.…
Nicholas Wade Writes Again—And Again Anthropology Pays Attention
Nicholas Wade has a new book out, and the Anthropologists are sharpening their indignation—complaining because he treads on their private territory. Sorry, anthro, you are not medicine or law, and do not have a monopoly over who practices what you preach. Let it go. Sometimes I think that the entire discipline is beset by a big-time inferiority complex
The solution? Simply do good anthropology, and more importantly, promote good anthropology. …