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. …
Everyone that has worked in any job in any field has done some time banging their head on a desk, counter or lift. As a public service here are a few topics you don’t need to do research on anymore, ever. Done. Finished.
Monica Udvardy from the University of Kentucky is involved with the repatriation of stolen vigango statues from US museums, to their owners in Kenya. Vigango are funerary statues which are typically removed (with or without the permission of the owners) from hillsides in Kenya, into a thriving local art market, and on to North American museums. Her story involves field ethnography, teaching, activism, and the ethics of both anthropology and business.…