In case you’ve forgotten the sage advice of Cindy van Gilder, here is a reminder
How the FBI spreads DIYBio
For more than a year now I have been conducting research on DIYBio . In a lucky break, the FBI convened a conference on DIYBio and Security this past summer, which I managed to attend. The conference lasted three days with sessions in the morning and afternoon. Some sessions were reserved for the FBI to discuss safety scenarios and other topics of special concern to them, and others for the invitees to discuss their lab. …
Incidental Anthropology: Wearing a V-Neck in Malaysia and “the flirt” on Facebook in Brazil
Two things today:
First, in a move of dubious methodological validity (though related to the move embraced by the Culturomics crowd and made profitable by the American comedian Jeff Foxworthy) , the Malaysian government would like you to be on the lookout for men wearing V-neck shirts.
Second, the blog Material World (you should read it!) just posted a great study about flirting on Facebook in Brazil.…
Incidental Anthropology: On “having it all” in France at the Dawn of the 20th Century
Today in Slate, there is a wonderful (and brief) article on the presentation of French women in popular magazines around the turn of the 20th century. At this time, magazine editors were moving from the established image of the bicycle riding “New Woman” to formulating the contemporary femme moderne. A nice snapshot of a category under construction.…
Day 2 of the German Conference on General Education Reform
The conference took interesting turns. Homage was paid to Goethe, Weber, Marx’ Theses on Feuerbach, and Bourdieu on the habitus of academic silos. Not the sort of thing that would have happened in our GE meetings at Chico State where the Engineers, Soil Scientists, and Business Profs would have shook their heads in bewilderment. Here in Geramny they did not. In CHico, I think that only the Sociologists and Anthropologists likely would be smiling at such references!…
Portraits of American Men Holding Hands
Some days the internet is full of cats and cheeseburgers and other days it is full of anthropological nuggets like this collection of American men holding hands. A good reminder to always ask: When is identity?…
Opening a window on “The Closing of American Academia”
It has been difficult over the past few weeks to miss Sarah Kendzior’s article in Al Jazeera and the ensuing rounds of reaction and counterreaction in the anthropological blogosphere. In her article, and in other recent writing about adjuncting, there is more than a passing element of nostalgia for a vanishing class escalator. The argument in brief: Meritocracy has fallen victim in the academe to the larger economic trend of offering serial un- and under paid internships in lieu of the middle class security of tenure, thus ensuring that only those who can afford to work without compensation (read children of the elite) may enter the academic ranks.…
Ever thought about learning Chinese? It’s about more than memorizing characters!
Kerim Friedman at Savageminds.org has written an interesting blog about what it means for a foreigner to speak Chinese. The blog is called “Seven Ways to Talk to a White Man.” Most Taiwanese assume foreigner cannot speak Chinese—so how does Kerim convince them that he indeed, is a potential Chinese conversation partner?
The blog itself is a good humorous introduction to the perceived relationships between language and race. A number of the coments which follow the blog add to the discussion. …
The Body Canvas Photo Competition
The Royal Anthropological Institute is holding their third international photography contest. The theme is The Body Canvas and the contest is open to anybody interested in anthropology, photography and science communication.
…The RAI’s Body Canvas photo competition aims to:
• promote public engagement with the RAI’s Education Outreach Programme
• provide a platform for people to share their work and become actively involved in anthropology
• develop an understanding for the personal, social and political reasons why people undergo permanent body modification
• explore the many ways in which communities around the world develop and express relationships with their bodies
• explore the industry of body modification, the artists, doctors and craftsmen who practise their trade
The submissions we are looking for:
Engaging photographs that explore biological, cross-cultural and social elements of body art and modification in relation to these categories:
1) Tattoos and Scarification
2) Piercings and Body Reshaping
Who can participate?
The “Applied” Regrets of Conrad Arensberg
At the end of his 1980 AAA presidential address, Arensberg paused to lament bequeathing the term “applied anthropology” to the Society for Applied Anthropology, which he and Eliot Chapple helped found in 1941:
“In Ireland, for peasants in their demography and their farm inheritances on the one hand, and in America for people in industries and slums and reservations on the other, the generation of the New Deal years – as my friends and I were – moved on to follow such personal involvements in the fates that overcame our subjects in formal and informal organization under institutional pressures and in political and economic trends.…
Chico Rocks, and Berkeley…
I was back on the Chico State campus last week, and the new first year students are here, parents hovering nearby as they prepare to cast them out to wilds of Chico State. The newly minted frosh are of course relishing this—they realize that Chico Rocks, and that they have finally managed to land where they are meant to be, if only they can finally ditch their parents, and seek out what the college president insists are that elusive “Chico Experience.”…
Immigration Trials and Tribulations
I came across a review “Green Card Stories: A Visual Catalog of Immigrants Trials and Tribulations” of a new book photo book. The review is by a writer for The Atlantic, Maria Popova, and focused on the role that determination, sacrifice, and stamina play in navigating the complicated immigration in the United States. As the book (and reviewer) note, it takes grit and determination to satisfy immigration law, and many end up spending years, and hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on application fees, lawyer fees, and so forth. …