~ a group blog on a variety of topics related to anthropology, sociology, and ordinary people ~
A few months back I wrote a post about tooling up for research That post lives here. A few months on I have discovered a few more tools to share.
I should note here, that Kerim at Savage Minds has recently written about his use of Markdown. Further, Savage Minds has a wonderful collection of how-to posts on various matters related to tooling, broadly speaking. But, onto the new tools.…
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.” …
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.…
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. …
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.
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. …
This week in Ethnography, I realized that “DIY anthropologist” Jared Diamond is now moving into the area of anthropology I hold most dear – ethnography. In earlier publications and movies, Diamond has dabbled in other areas of anthropology (e.g., archeology and physical) but his latest work cuts too close for my comfort. Barbara J. King posted a review of Diamond’s latest book entitled, “The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?”…
This is the second in a series of posts about my work on DIYBio. The initial post has some background and can be found here.
A popular (and sexy) comparison for DIYBio is with the Homebrew Computer Club. One often reads that DIYBio is at the same point in its development as the HCC was just prior to the IBM PC i.e. it is 1978 in the lab and a bright new industry is developing among hobbyists.…
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.…
This Week in Ethnography I found an interesting blog entitled,
LIVING ETHNOGRAPHY: Research and Conversations on Ethnography, Writing and Folklore
As personal blogs go, it’s more productive than most and the content is appealing. The About page is interesting in that it provides a few hints at the authors identity but no name:
I am a Folklorist, writer and ethnographer; I study immigration, communities and change. My current academic book project, Diversity Dependence: Suburban Identity and the Quest for a Multicultural Ideal examines three locations where immigrants and newcomers fundamentally influence political dynamics and identity.
This week in Ethnography, Heather E. Young-Leslie, Ph.D. describes how best to teach ethnography in the post entitled Sand in My Syllabus; Teaching Anthropology ‘Way Off Campus.
The anthropologist professor is not replaceable, not redundant. But the style of teaching anthropology that we have had since WWII… well, that is replaceable.
I start with the above quotation from the conclusion to give you a taste of the power of this piece. …
Three things on this holiday week:
1) In Slate there was a wonderful photo essay on sworn virgins in the Balkans. Also, here is a BBC interview with Antonia Young, the author of Women Who Become Men.
2) What would a holiday week be without a minor donnybrook over race and genes? This week brings us a useful discussion at the NYRB between Richard C. Lewontin and Nadia Abu El-Haj on the topic “Is There a Jewish Gene?”…