Around the Web

Welcome to the first web round up of 2011, let’s hit the links!

Working and productivity

• For those of you on the job market, Dean Dad has some sage advice on how to read salary ranges. “Published salary ranges bear almost no relationship to what a new hire can actually expect to get.”


• If you’re like me and easily distracted by bright, shiny objects check out this Google Chrome App for managing your access to the internet while you’re working.

Public or popular anthropology?

• One thing I’ve been considering lately is how the recent calls for “public” anthropology can over lap with the “popular.” Anthropology.net talks to Jane Goodall about what makes good, popular science writing.

“Science,” again

• BBC World Service covers the increasingly prominent role of litigation and libel in scientific and medical discourse and the potential threat it poses to the criticism of scientific papers necessary to the scientific method.


• Peter Peregrine of the Society for Anthropological Sciences and Hugh Gusterson of the AAA Executive Board take to the airwaves to discuss the role of science in anthropology in light of the ongoing debate over the changes to the AAA long-range plan in this radio broadcast.


• Fear not! “science” will undoubtedly return to the AAA’s long-range plan. So says Hugh Gusterson in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. So that’s all settled then. Right?
  

Urban Geography

• Detroit’s Mayor David Bing announces that the city is on track to successfully demolish 3,000 homes in one year. Bing’s goal is to remove 10,000 homes by 2013.


• A Gaurdian photo gallary of “Detroit in Ruins.”


• Multispecies ethnography: A review of the new book “Pigeon Trouble: Bestiary Biopolitics in a Deindustrialized America” by anthropologist Hoon Song.

Maps

• Check out this cool map based on 1860 census data on slave populations. By shading the southern counties to represent the proportion of the population that is enslaved (a new technique at the time, we are told) the reader can identify some clear patterns on slave population density.


• Also from Sociological Images, a national map of U.S. accents based on research collected in the Atlas of North American English. Not represented on this map: Black Vernacular English.


• Slate also ran a stunning map on “food deserts” in the United States, identifying communities without easy access to grocery stores. However, due to the fact that this map is on a national scale inner city food deserts are obscured.

Huckleberry Finn

• Earlier this month there was a scuffle over the publication of a new edition of Huckleberry Finn with the word “nigger” replaced with “slave”, “Injun” replaced with “Indian”, and “half-breed” with “half-blood.” It provoked considerable debate over the value of the editor’s motives – to make Twain’s classic more accessible – as opposed to the whitewashing of history. Racialicious collects links and quotes on the controversy here.


• Also this month the new Congress was sworn in and the 2011 legislative season begun. The new House majority marked the occasion with a ceremonial reading of the Constitution, but leaving out references to slavery and other passages superseded by amendments. A practice Slate directly related to the new edition of Huckleberry Finn.

Language

• Mind Hacks provides a digest of links on the Pirahã language, a subject of contentious debate among linguists.

Human Terrain System

• One out of work anthropologist gives his perspective on working for the HTS. In this extended field report the author gives a first hand account of completing the HTS training.


• HTS gets the Supernormal treatment

Economics and corporate ethnography

• Dean Dad reflects on “mature industries” and the potential for growth in the academic market when most new jobs today are being created by start-ups.


• Maxine Udall starts this blog post off with an must-read historical quote from an 8 year old girl on working in the coal mines.


• A long post on Ethnography.com on the recalcitrance of peasants to enter into global capitalism and the insufficiency of economic models to understand their self-sufficiency.


• The link above goes hand in hand with this new edited volume, The Human Economy.


• An anthropologist reflects on his five years at Intel and his reasons for leaving the company.

Seen something around the web that you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community? Send an email to mdthomps AT odu.edu.

Internet Ethnographers’ Guest Blogs

We have two USC post-doc ethnographers of internet culture coming your way in the next month or so, Jenny Cool and Patricia Lange.

Dr. Cool is a postdoctoral research fellow at USC’s Center for Visual Anthropology. She conducted dissertation field research on the social imaginaries and practices of media production and consumption in Cyborganic, “an influential early Web community.” I hope she will do a post on this fascinating work after exploring the fleeting togetherness in smart elevators.

Dr. Lange is a Postdoctoral Fellow at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts studying the semiotics of video production, sharing, and reception on YouTube and in the video blogging community.

Give them a Savage welcome!

Are we killing our students?

The title of this post is not a joke. There is increasingly good evidence that sitting too much is very bad for your health. Take a moment to read these two posts:

• Stand Up While You Read This (NY Times)


• Can Sitting Too Much Kill You? (Scientific American)

The take home point being that “sitting too much is not the same as exercising too little” and while both are bad, we can greatly improve our health by not sitting so much when we work. I myself switched to a standing desk some time ago (for writing – I still sit with my iPad when I’m reading), and former Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani has a good post about her own switch to a standing desk.

But what got me thinking about students was this line from Travis Saunders’s Scientific American post:

a recent study reports that roughly 70% of class time, including physical education class, is completely sedentary (while slightly better than class time, children were also sedentary for the majority of lunch and recess).

Since I became a teacher I spend most of my class time standing, but sometimes I have to sit while students do their presentations and I feel sorry for my students because the chairs my school bought for the classrooms are torture devices. I do give my students frequent breaks (at least one every hour), but if you add up all the classes they take they are spending a good portion of their day just sitting. A lot of teachers reshape their classroom, moving chairs into a circle to make it more democratic, but how many teachers require their students to stand during class?

In many Taiwanese classrooms (and I imagine elsewhere as well), being forced to stand during class is considered a type of punishment. But it seems to me that the collective health of our students (and even faculty at conferences and meetings) could be greatly improved if we weren’t so quick to pull up a seat. I don’t know how we might go about instituting such changes (how would students take notes if they don’t have standing desks?), but it seems worthwhile experimenting with alternative classrooms where students can sit or stand as they please, even switching between the two during class.

How racist is American anthropology?

Why does anthropology tend to focus on “exotic others"? Why this obsession with Africa? How come calls by well-known anthropologists such as Paul Rabinow to “anthropologize the West seemed to have not brought forth much fruit? How racist is American anthropology?

Kenyan anthropologist Mwenda Ntarangwi discusses those and other questions in his new book Reversed Gaze. An African Ethnography of American Anthropology.

Yes, Ntarangwi has conducted an anthropological study of American anthropology! An important undertaking. He has studied textbooks, ethnographies, coursework, professional meetings, and feedback from colleagues and mentors. He “reverses the gaze", he stresses: Whereas Western anthropologists often study non-Western cultures, he studies “the Western culture of anthropology".

He is especially interested in “the cultural and racial biases that shape anthropological study in general".

In the preface and introduction he writes:

If anthropology truly begins at home as Malinowski states, how come, as I had thus far observed, anthropology tended to focus on the “exotic"? How come only a small percentage of fieldwork and scholarship by Western anthropologists focused on their own cultures, and when they did it was among individuals and communities on the peripheries, their own “exotics” such as those in extreme poverty, in gangs, ad others outside mainstream culture? (…)

This book is a personal journey into the heart of anthropology; representing my own pathways as an African student entering American higher education in the early 1990s that I knew very little about. It is a story about my initial entry into an American academic space very different from my own experience in Kenya, where we followed a British system of education.

It is also a story hemmed within a specific discourse and views about anthropology that can be best represented by remarks from fellow graduate students who wondered what i was doing in a “racist” discipline. (…) Troubled by this label, I consciously embarked on a journey to find more about the discipline.

He critiques dominant tenets of reflexivity, where issues of representation in his opinion are reduced to anthropologists’ writing style, methodological assumptions, and fieldwork locations. Inherent power differences that make it easier for anthropologists to study other people ("studying down") than to study themselves ("studying up") are rendered invisible.

Ntarangwi seeks to contribute to the process of “liberating the discipline from the constraints of its colonial legacy and post- or neocolonial predicament". As long as the bulk of anthropological scholarship comes from Europe and North America and focuses on studying other cultures than their own, the power differentials attendant in anthropology today will endure.

I have just starting to read and took among others a short look at the chapter about the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA).

“I believe it is at the AAA meetings that the anthropological ritual of what we do as anthropologists is best performed", he writes:

Just as America has become an economic and political empire, American anthropology has consolidated a lot of power and in the process has peripheralized other anthropologies, forcing them either to respond to its whims and hegemony or to lose their international presence and appeal. The American Anthropological Association (AAA), I argue, is an important cultural phenomenon that begs for an ethnographic analysis.

It was in 2002, four years after his graduation that Mwenda Ntarangwi attended his first AAA-meeting. It was held in New Orleans. Already at the airport, he realises it is easy to spot anthropologists:

They were dressed casually, many were reading papers, and majority wore some exotic piece of jewelry or clothing that symbolized their field site - either a bracelet from Mexico (…), a necklace from a community in Africa, a tie-dyed shirt, or a multicolored scarf.

His observations from the different sessions he attended remind me of my own impressions: “Conference papers were written to make the presenters sound more profound rather than to communicate ideas", he writes.

But there were interesting panels as well, among others about “marginalization and exclusion of certain scholars and scholarship on the basis of their race". There were, he writes, “discussions of how Haitian anthropologists challenged the notion of race but were never “knighted", as was Franz Boas, simply because they were Black".

He also attended sessions where the speakers were using data collected ten or twenty years before and yet were speaking of the locals as if representing contemporary practices.

Ntarangwi went to the 2007 annual meeting as well. He was very much interested in seeing how well the meeting itself reflected in its theme “Inclusion, Collaboration, and Engagement.”

I’ll write about it next time. I’ll take the book with me on my short trip to Portugal. I’m leaving tomorrow.

You can read thw first pages of the books on Google Books. Check also Mwenda Ntarangwi’s website.

SEE ALSO:

How can we create a more plural anthropological community?

The Five Major Challenges for Anthropology

The resurgence of African anthropology

“Take care of the different national traditions of anthropology”

“No wonder that anthropology is banished from universities in the ‘decolonized’ world” (updated)

Keith Hart and Thomas Hylland Eriksen: This is 21st century anthropology

Book review: No fashion outside the "West"?

“The subject of fashion in non-Western world is largely understudied. The whole research community is to be blamed for viewing fashion too narrowly", Tereza Kuldova writes in her new book review for antropologi.info. She has read a new book on fashion studies: Fashion in Focus by sociologist Tim Edwards.

——-

Review: Fashion in Focus: Concepts, Practices and Politics by Tim Edwards, New York: Routledge, 2011.

Tereza Kuldova, PhD Fellow, Department of Ethnography, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo



Fashion in Focus by Tim Edwards is mainly an overview work, summarizing most of the texts predominantly within the confines of sociology that deal with various aspects of the fashion system.

Nilofer: Pakistani fashion in Dubai. Foto: Mark Kirchner, flickr

The book is not a revelation in any sense and it does not develop the theory of fashion in any major way, though one might find traces of such attempts within the text. Considered as a summary of the most influential theories in fashion studies, it is a very good one. The language of the work is marked by clarity of expression, though there is a tendency towards excessive repetitiveness (though again, this might come handy to students)

However, the book considers almost without exception only western fashion, leaving the emerging non-western fashion centers unnoticed and the ‘East’ thus remains simply an (exploited) producer of fashion, rather than being treated as more and more important consumer. Considering the fact that Louis Vuitton’s sales are higher in Asia than in Europe and US together, this is a severe omission.

This omission is however not the mistake of the author summarizing the existing work, the whole research community is to be blamed for viewing fashion too narrowly, as a modern particularly Western phenomenon, focusing on consumption while neglecting production. With the exception of a handful of anthropologists, the subject of fashion in non-Western world is largely understudied and production and consumption remain separated in most of the studies.



The author is of course not unaware of the situation and to fill the gap he includes a chapter (7) on the production of fashion. There is a nice section that says it all in a few lines, let me quote:

“Fashion, even in its second-hand market versions, is sold according to illusion or the notion that dresses, jackets or shoes are somehow invested with the transformative magic to make us more than what we are, that clothes may somehow make up for what we lack or more simply help us to fulfill our fantasies. Fashion’s production is a grim reminder that they are no such thing, that they are just material assembled and sold, often at a rip-off cost to our pockets and at the expense or the exploitation of someone else” (121).

However, one might want to add, even though clothes and other fashion objects are in principle just assembled materials, their power over the minds of the self-fashioning individuals and the magic has real effects. Thomas’ theorem works here perfectly, ‘if people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’.

Though as a person involved in the research on production and consumption of fashion in India I was looking forward to this chapter in particular, I was disappointed to a degree. The author hardly goes beyond stating the “popular”, i.e. ‘fashion production is exploitation’. Yet, as my own fieldwork can tell, it might be both, exploitation and empowerment. The omnipresent idea of a dreadful sweatshop is without doubt true to reality in some cases; however the incredible variety of destinies within fashion production can hardly be reduced to it.

A balanced and empirically grounded view is what is needed here. Only an in-depth qualitative research seems to be able to reveal the actual processes and meanings of and within the incredible complex rollercoaster of fashion industry. It appears as if too much of the theorizing done in the book is from the table, based on one’s perceptions, local bias, and readings of other scholars equally speculating from the warmth of their office chairs.



Edwards however makes up for certain omissions by paying attention to other rather neglected topics within the fashion studies, and that is men’s wear, children wear and recently also the topic of media, celebrities, designers and desire. In the third chapter he turns his attention towards the case of western suit, discussing topics of gender and masculinity in relation to the evolution of suit as a nexus of the consumption of men’s fashion in the West. There is a nice point in the chapter that Edwards makes about the oscillation of men’s dress throughout centuries from extravagant and lavish to simple and modest and back, he calls it “playboy” vs. “puritan” tendencies (45). These concepts might have broader application, not only being useful in conceptualizing the recent rise of the ‘metrosexual’ man, but also in conceptualizing fashion in other non-Western contexts.

In the fifth chapter he then turns towards the children fashion. This chapter being based on the actual original research by the author is definitely one of the more interesting. It draws on interview material with retailers, designers and consumers of children fashion in UK. It touches on the topics of branding of child wear, increasing fashion consciousness of children and the relationships between parents and children as consumers, as well as the tendency of parents to turn the child into a “mini me”.

Children fashion show in Singapore. Photo: Choo Yut Shing, flickr

Edwards concludes that in respect to children fashion in the UK market “the overwhelming key variables were age and gender and not class, geography or ethnicity” (100), which is hardly surprising. However what is possibly new (though the question remains to which degree) is “the rise of a more adult sense of fashion consciousness in the children’s clothing market, whether in terms of the wishes of some parents to dress their children more fashionably or in terms of wider trends of ‘mini-me’” (100).

The last chapter is then devoted to a trendy and until recently also neglected topic of desire, designers, branding and celebrities. He presents a good introduction into this topic, but it also becomes obvious that it is an area which needs more thorough investigation. Let me give you a tasting of this chapter in a quote that at the same time in a way makes obvious why fashion needs to taken seriously as a research object. It is “the combining of the desire for a designer label – whether sexual or more diffuse – for another person that turns contemporary fashion not only into a process of desiring objects but one of desiring subjects. More problematically still it also becomes a process of desiring subjectivity per se. Not only is the fashion consumer a desiring subject who desires both objects and other subjects but a desirer of alternative forms of subjectivity” (158).



Further the book includes summaries of both classical, modern and postmodern fashion theory, as well as a discussion on fashion, feminism and fetishism and ideas on the politics of dressing and self-expression. It is apparent by now that the book will make a good resource for students of fashion in various disciplines and it might thus stimulate further development of fashion theory, not less because it points towards the blind spots in the theory and towards areas that need to be investigated with greater sensitivity.

—-

See more reviews by Tereza Kuldova, among others Religious globalization = Engaged cosmopolitanism?, The deep footprints of colonial Bombay and Hindi Film Songs and the Barriers between Ethnomusicology and Anthropology or Colonialism, racism and visual anthropology in Japan: Photography, Anthropology and History and my look at her master’s thesis about the Chikan embroidery industry in India That’s why there is peace

Human Planet: Ambitious BBC "anthropology" multi media project launched

The Dictionary of Man: Will Bob Geldof and the BBC reproduce racist anthropology? was the title of a (rather sceptical) post back in 2007. Now this ambitious project, four years ago described as “the largest ever living record of films, photographs, anthropological histories, philosophies, theologies, economies, language and art, as well as people’s personal stories” is ready for the TV-screens and partly for the web as well.

Human Planet is it called, now focussing on “man’s remarkable relationship with the natural world” with stories from “eighty of the most remote locations on Earth".

The website is beautiful. Stunning photographs, videos, text, music and lots of links to external websites. Unfortunately (not surprisingly, though in our economic system), most people on this planet won’t be able to view the videos (within the UK only, I suppose).

UPDATE: Sian Davies from the BBC writes to me and informs that some videos are availabe worldwide, f.ex Walking on the sea bed (Bajau fisherman, Sulbin, freedives to 20 metres to catch his supper.), Pa-aling divers (One of the most dangerous fishing methods of all. A 100 strong crew in the Philippines dive to 40 metres, breathing air pumped through makeshift tangled tubes by a rusty compressor), and Gerewol courtship festival.

Several anthropologists have been involved. Nevertheless, the question remains how people from around the world are represented. Is it the usual exotisation or has the BBC chosen a more innovative approach?

Have a look yourself - here are two (visually fascinating) videos from the Human Planet YouTube playlist

>> Human Planet Website

>> Human Planet Production Blog



Check also the comment on Culture Matters Bob Geldof – the “saviour” of the cultures of the world? (19.4.2007)

Another new initiative - more academic, though, to showcase this planet’s diversity is the Global Ethnographic, “a general interest, peer reviewed web journal featuring the field research and perspectives shaping our social world. Free and exclusively online, Global Ethnographic is multi-media driven and cross-disciplinary, bringing you the scholarly conversations on daily life as it is lived and experienced around the world.”

The website is already online, but the content will be launched the 31.1. 2011.

SEE ALSO:

“Tribal wives” - Pseudo-anthropology by BBC?

In Norwegian TV: Indian tribe paid to go naked

“Good story about cannibals. Pity it’s not even close to the truth”

Is this anthropology? African pygmies observe Britains in TV-show

Why anthropologists should study news media

Study of French Canadian founder population

HUMAN GENETICS
DOI: 10.1007/s00439-010-0945-x

Genomic and genealogical investigation of the French Canadian founder population structure

Marie-Hélène Roy-Gagnon et al.

Abstract

Characterizing the genetic structure of worldwide populations is important for understanding human history and is essential to the design and analysis of genetic epidemiological studies. In this study, we examined genetic structure and distant relatedness and their effect on the extent of linkage disequilibrium (LD) and homozygosity in the founder population of Quebec (Canada). In the French Canadian founder population, such analysis can be performed using both genomic and genealogical data. We investigated genetic differences, extent of LD, and homozygosity in 140 individuals from seven sub-populations of Quebec characterized by different demographic histories reflecting complex founder events. Genetic findings from genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data were correlated with genealogical information on each of these sub-populations. Our genomic data showed significant population structure and relatedness present in the contemporary Quebec population, also reflected in LD and homozygosity levels. Our extended genealogical data corroborated these findings and indicated that this structure is consistent with the settlement patterns involving several founder events. This provides an independent and complementary validation of genomic-based studies of population structure. Combined genomic and genealogical data in the Quebec founder population provide insights into the effects of the interplay of two important sources of bias in genetic epidemiological studies, unrecognized genetic structure and cryptic relatedness.

Link