Ethnography.com - ~ a group blog on a variety of topics related to anthropology, sociology, and ordinary people ~

An Ethnography of San Francisco by Thai writer Rong Wongsavun now published in English

Posted on October 10, 2022October 10, 2022 by Tony Waters

‘Rong Wongsavun (1932-2009) was a prolific Thai author and photographer who began publishing in the 1950s, continuing until he passed away in 2009. Throughout his life spent writing, he claimed to never age beyond age 28, which is why he always signed his name as “Young Man!”. Hugely popular with Thai readers during his lifetime, his work is now, for the first time, being published in English. The Man From Bangkok: San Francisco Culture in the 60s, first printed in 1978 is about his travels in California, and has now been published by White Lotus Press of Thailand. …

What Happens if Chinese Smartphones Teach English Lessons in Tanzania?

Posted on October 7, 2022November 6, 2022 by Christina Lauren Quigley

English is the dominant global language of the world, it is the language of power, and control. But it is not the only language, and different people have different levels of command over the use of the same language. It is interesting to watch how this happens, often in unexpected ways, for example by the arrival of Chinese cell phones here in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

I recently bought the cheapest smartphone I could find, when it seemed my primary phone had been burned by excess voltage coming out of the electrical sockets in rural/provincial Tanzania (Kigoma).…

Trying to Out the CIA, and Other Musings about Ethnography.com

Posted on September 8, 2022September 8, 2022 by Tony Waters

Last June, I published an article about the role of the CIA in the post-World War II world order. I rather liked it, but no one seems to read it! So here’s a link, so that anyone who follows Ethnography.com might check it out!

This post is mainly though to get myself re-engaged with Ethnography.com, and perhaps you too. We have had several excellent submissions posted since just 2020 from Tunisia, Madagascar, Dominica, Tanzania, and India.…

Understanding the Shaman’s Tribulations

Posted on June 15, 2022 by Guest Blogger

Understanding the Shaman’s Tribulations
– By Taba Menia –

The scholarship of shamanism is closely related to ideas about traditional healing and their knowledge. Found across the world in concern with the relationship between health and the super-natural, Shamans are observed as custodians of the human realm. Becoming a shaman involves expertise in traditional knowledge and transcendental abilities. Many researchers have focused on the initiation in Shamanhood and their roles. However, few discuss the Shaman’s own accounts of their hardships

I came across Shaman understandings of their work when I was carrying out my fieldwork in Arunachal Pradesh, high in the Himalayas in the far east of India between December 2020 and March 2021.…

(Almost) Native Ethnography Meets the Heat of the Tunisian Desert

Posted on March 29, 2022October 7, 2022 by Guest Blogger

– by Imen El Amouri –

Before embarking on my ethnographic graduate research, I dove into literature on native anthropological research in North Africa and the Arab world. My personal anguish over social and political conditions in my parents’ (and sometimes my own) home country motivated me to study Tunisian society. With confidence, I started my fieldwork in a remote desert village in the south of Tunisia. The following vignette from my fieldwork has put my native gaze in question.…

Ghosts Look Over the Shoulders of Myanmar Peace Negotiators

Posted on January 18, 2021January 16, 2021 by Tony Waters

Peace Studies researcher Elise Boulding wrote that peace, including the type sought today in Myanmar, is focused by a “two hundred year present.” By this she meant that how people think about their values, fears, loyalties and dreams is inherited from the memories of parents and grandparents who recall the emotional events they heard about as children from their elders.

This is how they came to think about who is the “us” that is loved and trustworthy, and the “them” that is to be feared, avoided and distrusted. …

One (dis)placed ethnographer’s movements during the pandemic: Is the on-line world a lesser ethnographic world?

Posted on December 14, 2020April 3, 2022 by Tony Waters

– guest blog By Sarah Huxley –

The joys and pains of ethnography, as many an ethnographer might tell you, focus on the immersive, and experiential conundrums that ‘real life’ invariably spits up. That’s not to say that there is no/ little preparation, but rather to say that the very nature of the ethnographic methodology, that is– the ontology, allows for and acknowledges that, just as in life, research must have a space for the unknown, or uninvited dinner guest.…

The Fear of Dahalo Bandits on a Drive Through the Alaotra Night (Madagascar)

Posted on November 30, 2020October 7, 2022 by Tony Waters

– guest blog by Anders Norge Lauridsen –

Why are we stopping? The shadows are growing longer and the twilight is near, but we still have a long way home to the village of Anororo ahead of us. A man at a run from the other tractor several ridges behind us catches up with our tractor and announces between his gasps for breath the bad news. The other tractor has broken down.…

What does a Chicken, Drums, Whiskey, Gossip, and International Diplomacy have in common?

Posted on September 29, 2020October 7, 2022 by Christina Lauren Quigley

With the Ethnography.com website’s updated ‘modern’ look and my ‘mysterious’ long-term disappearance from America, you may be wondering about the site’s header photos, and what the heck is going on over here? Maybe call this ‘flash ethnography’ mixed with ethnographic photography. Here are five short stories…

^ THIS IS THE CHURCH COURTYARD at the ethnographer’s primary Fulbright research site. It is an important Pentecostal church in town that is also a small community.…

Reading Myanmar—‘Miss Burma’ and the Liberal Conscience

Posted on March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 by Tony Waters

Miss Burma (2017) by Charmaine Craig is a historical novel that tells the story of Burma from the perspective of a Karen family that was part of Rangoon’s elite after World War II. The book describes the Karen perspective on mid-20th-century wars in Burma, beginning with the Japanese invasion in 1942 and continuing today. Resonating particularly well is the focus on the betrayals that underlay ceasefire and peace negotiations conducted in the name of liberal democracy starting in the 1940s.

…

Batman’s Butler Alfred Philosophizes about Colonial Violence in British Burma

Posted on February 28, 2020 by Tony Waters

Colonial Burma has a strange hold on the Anglo-American imagination—it is a remote and exotic place where the British were not very successful in holding sway. British authority was routinely challenged by people in the forests of Burma who, the British felt, did not understand the beneficent “reason” inherent to their colonial project. From a British perspective the Burmese rebels and dacoits were unreasonable—they could not be bribed fairly and squarely with rubies, as the British expected.…

The Elephants, the Peace Process, and the Blindmen in a Myanmar Hotel Ballroom

Posted on January 3, 2020December 21, 2019 by Tony Waters

The Joint Peace Fund, the group sponsoring the 2015 Ceasefire in Myanmar, sponsored a reception on International Peace Day at the Chatrium Hotel in September 2019. I was there because like much of Yangon’s NGO world, I know that the Joint Peace Fund administers a huge pot of foreign aid that funds the “peace process”. The keynote speaker at the International Peace Day reception was European Union’s Ambassador to Myanmar and Chair of the Joint Peace Commission, Ambassador Kristian Schmidt. …