Last year I took a break from my regular job teaching Chico State undergraduates, and taught graduate students at a private university in Germany. Classes were tiny, students hard-working, and engaged in the esoterica of social theory. I really liked it a lot. One of my students even managed to get a book review published in an important sociology journal, Sociological Review from the UK. Every essay, from all 14 students per semester, started with a concise outline, and the entire essay was carefully divided into an Introduction, Body, and Conclusion.…
Headed to Denmark…
The EPIC conference is fast approaching and thanks in part to Ethnography.com I’ll be on my way to Denmark at the end of next week to attend the EPIC conference at the University of Copenhagen. I am excited and nervous about the trip! It is my first time traveling to Europe and only my second international trip. I’m excited because this is the first conference of this kind that I will be attending, and I expect that I will learn a lot about new and different ways that ethnographic research is being used, how people are successfully presenting their ideas and research, and of course I hope to learn a thing or two about the Danish.…
A view from 2 months in Iraq with a Human Terrain Team
A wordle a day
I saw this great idea at Grant McCrackens blog. It called a wordle, and are some of the words that are in this post on ethnography.com.
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Whining about Practitioners
Mark Dawson has touched on a common whine of “practitioners” about academics whose research is not “good” for anything, at least not good for anything they want. This is a common complaint in which so-called practitioners (as if academics don’t “practice” anything), who assert that if it ain’t good for achieving their policy goals they have already concluded are important anyway, it shouldn’t be done.
But, too often the demand for research in policy making circles is what Stephen Jay Gould once criticized as “advocacy masquerading as objectivity.”…
Wake Up and Smell the (Fair-trade) Coffee
While I find your particular conflation of “liberal,” “Marxist,” and “academic anthropologist” delightfully mid-century, (although probably going to garner you a D on the final exam), Mark, I have let it slide long enough. I’ve got news for you, in the United States, you ARE a left-leaning anthropologist, and there’s little you can do about it. Why? Because the way that the political lines are drawn in this country and the terms “left” and “right” are defined, you fall squarely to the left and so does nearly every anthropologist in the country.…
Ok, for the record, I am not a left leaning anthropologist
I am not a right leaning one either. I feel compelled to mention this due to a bizarre claim made by Hugh Gusterson in an article he wrote for Foreign Policy Magazine. Heres a partial quote related to anthropologists accepting funding from the Pentagon:
“Some will be concerned that the Pentagon will seek to bend their research agenda to its own needs, interfering with their academic freedom. Still others will be nervous that colleagues will shun them.…
Something about Homecomings and The Innocent Anthropologist by Nigel Barley
One of my favorite anthropology books is The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut by Nigel Barley. It is a memorably written story of Barley’s experience doing fieldwork in rural Cameroon. The strength of the book is that it includes the personal problems that emerge out of the frustrations, boredom, tribulations, and mis-interpretations that emerge in the context of “doing ethnography.” In this sense it is much different than the dispassionate, theoretical, and scientific ethnography typically assigned undergraduates in which the ethnographer somehow always ends up being always erudite, and insightful. …
Some thoughts as my additions to ethnography.com wind down
Hello Folks-
I have been avoiding writing much about the Human Terrain System since I am not an “official voice” of the program. Also, as I have written before, I don’t consider myself a scholar in any way. I don’t write (or desire to) create the usual peer reviewed materials. I am part of the long proud tradition of tradesmen… craftspeople. I am an anthropological handyman if you will. People have a problem or issue and I am happy and lucky enough to use my training to help them with a resolution.…
Hurry, Deadline July 25th! Scholarships Announcement
I just received this from the EPIC folks!
Scholarships Announcement 2008 Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference
We [EPIC, not ethnography.com] are pleased to announce 3-5 scholarships for the EPIC conference in Copenhagen, 15-18 October 2008. Any student (undergraduate, master’s, Ph.D.) can apply! Scholarship recipients will receive free registration, in exchange for working 12-16 hours before or during the conference.
Deadline for applications: 25 July 2008
Application process: Please submit a curriculum vitae and a cover letter to scholarships@epic2008.com…
Nicole Suveges, a funny, kind person, has died on an HTS mission in Iraq
The HTS program lost its 2nd Social Scientist this week, Nicole Suveges. She was funny and kind and one of the first people I met in the program. 11 other people, military and civilian were also killed in the explosion. The official announcement from the HTS is below (original link: http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil/In%20Memoriam.htm)
It is with great sadness that we inform you of the tragic death of Nicole Suveges, our social scientist team member assigned to the Iraq Human Terrain Team (HTT) IZ3, in support of 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division based at FOB Prosperity, Baghdad, Iraq.…
US Embassy in Germany Protects Americans from Soccer Fans Armed with Bratwurst
Tonight is the semi-final Euro-cup match between Germany and Turkey. People here in Germany really like soccer, and do things like watch it on outside screenings. But the US Embassy is on its toes! Americans in Germany are warned that such sporting events can result in boisterous behavior, and even a fight now and then. At a minimum, the US Embassy tells us, such events can result in bad things like traffic jams!…