The Arrival Scene is a trope of classic anthropological literature. In invoking the beginning of the anthropologist’s journey among a specific people, a specific landscape is invariably described. Doing so is more than an attempt to hook the reader—writing these scenes also hooks the anthropologist back into the field experience. That moment, conjured in narrative, when the anthropologist is confronted with the people and place they have decided to make familiar, is also when the anthropologist begins their attempt to feel at home in an unfamiliar place.…
Category: General Anthropology
Will consult for food
I have not been posting much recently. This is because I have been laying the plans to leave my current position at Jump Associates at the end of January to start a new path far away from the business of design and strategy. I have noticed I need a radical career change every 8 to 10 years. I am going to be doing a bit of independent consulting before my next gig.…
Teaching Tales (Episode II)
That’s right – I changed my unit of analysis from a “part” to an “episode.” Those of you who teach, especially in the world of small, highly interactive classrooms full of undergraduates, will understand that the experience is enough like a sitcom to warrant the analogy.
Today’s episode took place in my senior capstone Anthropological Theory seminar during the final class meeting. We were munching on local delicacies such as shrimp tacos, carnitas tortas, and enchiladas verde, when students asked me to talk more about “that HTS controversy” and the AAA’s.…
Many Random Things on my Mind
I am intrigued by what seems to be a persistent pattern among my peers, one that seems to render them unlikely (not to say incapable) of thinking anthropologically about their own lives, and careers. I am frustrated by the number of times I’ve had the, “go ahead and submit that article you are sitting on, what are you waiting for,” conversation with my fellow women in anthropology. Did they not remember that article submission (among other things in our profession) can still be highly gendered, and that men tend to send stuff off because “it’s great,” and women tend to send the same quality of stuff off much less often, because it “needs some more work”—and then gets lost in the shuffle, and never gets sent out at all. …
Really Nice Strangers
I have traveled quite a bit in the last few months. In June I was in Thailand about ten days, and I have been living in Germany since August. During this time, I have had the usual mix-ups that go with traveling—missing trains, wandering off in unforeseen circumstances, and just generally misplacing stuff. Generally people are pretty nice about these things. Indeed, I just met “met” my third really nice stranger in these travels, so I guess it is time to acknowledge them.…
Well, at least the AAA meeting gave me some perspective
I didn’t say it was a happy one, but it is a perspective. Of course there were the expected strident calls of moral outrage over anthropologists in the military. Then it got worse when a voice vote was taken and passed that “no reports should be provided to sponsors [of research] that are not also available to the general public and, where practicable, to the population studied.” (from the Chronicle of Higher Ed.…
Teaching Tales (Part I)
Yesterday I walked into the classroom of my Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology class and passed two young women deeply engaged in an animated discussion. The snippet I overheard was part of a recounted conversation: “…and I was all, ‘Geeze, she’s your professor!!’ I mean seriously, would it kill him to codeswitch? It’s just stupid…” Her conversational partner was nodding affirmatively in shared disdain.
Don’t you love it when the anthropology actually takes?!…
It’s time again for the Ig Nobel Awards….
Every year, the Journal of Improbable Research hosts the wonderful Ig Noble Awards for research that makes you laugh and then think. The Ig Nobles have all the usual areas such as peace, aviation, linguistics and of course, chickens. The ceremony also includes winning a date with a noble laureate, and the 24/7 lectures. In the 24/7 lecture series, established scientists have 24 seconds to give a technical explanation of their scientific field.…
Human Terrain System: Too Little, Too Late, and So What?
Ok, Mark Dawson finally wrote often enough about the Human Terrain System for me to investigate what this military program actually is. I have some sympathy for the idea of using anthropology in the military because I have seen too many anthropologically incorrect lieutenants proclaiming to the press something along the lines of “You gotta be here to understand the bad guys. All the bad guys understand is strength/power/force/money. It is just their culture.…
Digital Ethnography
Today I had the random idea to search YouTube.com for the keyword “ethnography” to see what, if anything, it would come up with. The first two videos that were listed intrigued me. The videos are products of Kansas State University’s anthropology department. The students and faculty of that department have created an on-going project focusing specifically on digital ethnography.
I think this type of project is so exciting and can come up with really interesting results.…
Chico and Berkeley old version
The current version of this paper is here.
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.
American Anthropology Association Issues Statement on HTS, based on… not much it seems.
Ah, the days go by and even I cool down. While I am very critical of the wording the Executive Board chose for its statement on the HTS, I am not sure I would have wanted to be on the “AAA Ad Hoc Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology With the US Security and Intelligence Community”. They were in what has to be a lose-lose position. No matter what they said, some large group of people were going to be really ticked off.…