I lived in Thailand as a young Peace Corps Volunteer in the early 1980s. To learn Thai, I would go into small local restaurants where I would sit at a table. As a lone single foreigner, my presence raised curiosity of the people working at the restaurants, or other patrons. Oftentimes is was a 30 or 40 year old woman who owned the stall, and made their living selling bowls of noodle soup. …
Dominance and Subordination, Max Weber Style
I am teaching a sociology class in northern Thailand to a group of nine Chico State students who are here for a special summer session. As with most of my sociology classes, I have assigned Max Weber’s classic essay “Classes, Staende, Parties” at an early point in the class. Particularly what Weber writes about what in German is called “Staende” is relevant to Thailand. Staende are the groups we form in which we have loyalty to others in the same group, to whom we are loyal, and share a way of life. …
Who, What, When and Wai?
I was young once in Thailand. I lived here as a 22-25 year old, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and after that working in refugee camps. In these roles, I tried to blend into Thai society as well as possible, despite my long nose, height, blondish hair and the fact that my Thai language tones were far from accentless (or, as my Thai teacher told me last year “three out of five tones—not bad…”).…
Changing Thailand, Not Changing Thailand: Of Water Buffalo, Work Elephants, and Cultural Persistence
Karen Connelly was a Rotary Exchange student in Phrae Province, northern Thailand, in 1986-1987 as a 16 and 17 year old. She published an enchanting memoir about her experiences in Phrae Province Dream of a Thosuand Lives: A Sojourn in Thailand in 1993, a book that won the coveted Governor General’s prize for Canadian Literature. I can indeed understand well why the book won the prize. Her descriptions of Phrae bring alive the world of northern Thailand in the 1980s. …
Ethnography.com sold to FOX News Corp for $123.6 million as part of new media strategy.
1 APRIL 2011 (Variety Newswire) NEW YORK – FOX News Corp and Ethnography.com has announced the acquisition of Ethnography.com by the conservative news network for $123.6 million dollars in cash and stock. According to the agreement jointly released by Fox and Ethnography.com, the network assumes all rights to the domain, the content of the website and the copyrights to the phrases “ethnography” and “ethnography.com.” The current authors of Ethnography.com will join a number of popular FOX news hosts to contribute a social and cultural context to reporting; ranging from American eating habits to explaining how the cultural factors of “President” Obama’s birth in Indonesia affects how he rules US citizens. …
Book Review! Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century
Carol Bohmer and Amy Shuman. Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century. London: Routledge, 2007. 304pp. $39.95 (paper), ISBN: 0415773768.
Citizenship is a tricky concept rooted in the relationship between the individual and her or his government. Citizens have a responsibility to respect the state and what Max Weber called its “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force”; in return, the state guarantees individual rights and respects the right of citizens to participate peacefully in self-government.…
Call for Videos–Applied Video Festival at the Society for Applied Anthropology
Call for Videos–Applied Video Festival at the Society for Applied
Anthropology, Seattle 2011
The Society for Applied Anthropology will hold a one-day Applied Video
Festival at the 71st Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington. The
festival is on April 1, 2011. One video producer will win a cash prize
of $250 and free registration ($120) to attend the conference.
This open call for video submissions welcomes all genres ranging from
the ethnographic to the expository and experimental.…
Job Announcement: Ethnographer at Pitney Bowes
ETHNOGRAPHER
Description
The Concept Studio is a customer-centered innovation group with the mission of providing Pitney Bowes with rich customer and market insights to discover new business opportunities and guide decision-making.
Our multi-disciplinary team of designers, strategists and technologists collaborate with Pitney Bowes business units in fast-paced projects, to identify unmet needs and market opportunities and to shape those insights into tangible B2B product and service innovations.
We currently have an opening for a social scientist with expertise in the anthropology of work, ethnographic research, and data analysis and synthesis.…
Opportunity to participate in the discussion on the new AAA code of ethics
For those of you that are AAA members, or participate in those conversations:
The AAA is posting proposed rewrites to the Code of Ethics, section by section, to their blog for discussion and comment. The first topic being hashed out is “Do no harm.” If you want to observe or participate, click on over to http://blog.aaanet.org/ethics-task-force/…
Call for Papers: SfAA Seattle 2010
Call for papers: Society for Applied Anthropology Meetings, Seattle, WA, March 29-April 2, 2011
Roundtable discussion
Anthropology in a Box: Extending the Reach of Anthropology in Institutional Settings
Libraries, hospitals, schools, businesses, and the military; these are all institutions that can inspire and require novel anthropological approaches, both theoretical and methodological. These kinds of spaces leave ambiguous the lines between clients, colleagues, and research participants. Anthropologists working within and adjacent to institutions often find themselves with multiple roles, each enmeshed in different relations of power within the organization.…
UCLA loses to USC, but is Still Afraid to Challenge Chico State in College Rankings!
It is college ranking season again, sponsored by US News and World Report. Once again, US News left Chico State out of their ranking system, I think because the big kids thought that they would lose if it came to any measure of undergraduate education. After all as I have long asserted, Chico State beats UC Berkeley when it comes to quality of undergraduate teaching; what possible advantage could some university in southern California hope to have over any of us in northern California?! …
Working Class, Upper Class, Community Colleges, and Harvard U.
For anyone interested in social stratification and university systems, Julie Garza-Withers has written “Is the Community College Still the Best Bet for Working Class Students?” over on the “Working Class Perspectives” Blog. This blog raises similar issues to what I wrote about in my essay here “The Sociology of Status Hierarchy and Why I Think Chico State is a Better College than UC Berkeley?” Or more to the point, Garza-Withers’ blog asks why such a premium is put on where you learned something, rather than what you learned? …