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.…
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.…
Applied Ethnography and the German Military in Afghanistan
I went to a workshop Friday in which anthropological involvement with the German military in Afghanistan was described. The German army is participating in the NATO operation in northern Afghanistan, which is in one of the more peaceful areas of that country. An ethnologist, Dr. Monika Lanik reported on the difficulties in developing inter-cultural competence in the context of deployments. Ethnographic competence is considered important because the German military is taking on a new international character as a result of peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan, and the former Yugoslavia.…
Festival in the Suburbs
So now that Halloween is over, and a good time was had by my family, I can muse aloud (or ablog) about the slow creep of Halloween from a good time for kids, to a mandatory RAGING PARTY for the adults, and how that plays out in Homeowner Associations, and other community organizations.
This is the first time in my life I’ve ever lived within the influence of an HOA, and I have to say, it’s quite a learning experience.…
From Economics to Culture, and Finally Metaphysics
Last week I gave my students a classic think and reflect question: what is the relationship between culture and economics. Three particularly good responses stick in my mind, and I want to share them with ethnography.com.
The first student thinks like Mark, likened culture, economics, and politics to a car. The engine is economics, politics is the fuel, and the wheels are culture. The car needs the fuel of politics to keep going.…
The Pontiac Solstice is one of the most intriguing designs I know of
About a year and a half ago I purchased a Pontiac Solstice convertible, silver. Now some would point out this the classic midlife crisis car. However, if this truly was a midlife crisis purchase, I would’ve gotten the one painted in bright red. Now in and of itself the design is very well done, and they essentially fly out of dealer showrooms as fast as they arrive. But it does something else that I find absolutely fascinating.…
Jeffrey Sachs, William Easterly and…Bronislaw Malinowski???
It is popular today to frame the development debate in the context of two books by economists, the glass half-full story of Jeffrey Sachs The End of Poverty, and the glass half-empty story of William Easterly The White Man’s Burden. Both writers observed the world of foreign development aid for years. Sachs’ conclusion is that given the weak investment in remote third world villages, it is not surprising that development has not occurred.…
Inter-disciplinary Teams
This is the first semester of the Engineering for Peoples and Markets Program at Fresno State. The program consists of two teams. Each team consists of two or three engineer majors (computer and electrical), an entrepreneurship major, and an anthropology major. The purpose of our team is to work together on the creation, design, and marketability of a piece of technology created by the engineers for their senior projects. It has been interesting discovering each of our roles within this project, and the experience of working with people trained in different fields has been valuable. …
Good Company
Well the historic First Dinner of (some of the) ethnography.com bloggers has come and gone, and a good time was indeed had. Much of the conversation was about (surprise!) anthropology and anthropologists, and during that evening I was reminded of a theory of subfields and personality that I formed early in my graduate career.
It came to me pretty quickly that there were startling contrasts between the anthropologists I hung out with as an undergraduate (gregarious, lots of parties, good people, so nice I married one of them) with the ones I was encountering as a graduate student. …