Anthropology Major Fox

Hello, and welcome to Anthropology Major Fox, the meme for us Anthro freaks.

You don't have to be a major or minor to appreciate the submissions, you just have to love that tricky little field of Anthropology. Submissions about all four (perhaps five) areas of Anthropology will be accepted; Cultural, Biological, Linguistic, and Archeological Anthropology, as well as Applied Anthropology (if you think that's separate).

Spotlight on anthro students

anthropologyatmassey:


This week we have the lovely Liz from Anthropology Major Fox.  You can also find over at siuilaruin.tumblr.com.  
1. What are you studying and at what level?
 
I have just finished my first year of university at the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario. I had completed a semester of college prior to that, so I came into my first year with some credits, making me kind of a 1st year and a half. I am currently waiting to hear back about approval for my entrance into the Archaeology Specialist program at U of T (we have Minors, Majors, and Specialists, and a Specialist degree requires more credits). I am working towards a BA in Archaeology, as well as minoring in Women and Gender Studies.
2. How did you get involved in studying anthropology? What were your initial influences?
If it was not for tumblr, I never would have ended up studying archaeology at U of T. In my senior year of high school I was taking two courses from a local community college for matriculation credit, one was a history course, and the other was Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. I picked them randomly. But I soon discovered that I really loved anthropology. I began looking into what it would be like to study it in college, and looking online for information, and I just started falling in love with the discipline. So this was in March of 2011, which was when all of the “Major Memes” began infiltrating tumblr and the internet at large. English Major Armadillo, Art Student Owl, Science Major Mouse, etc. I loved them, but couldn’t find one for anthropology. So I messaged the Science Major Mouse moderator and asked if they would be posting any anthro-related memes. They brushed me off and said that they only posted stuff from the “hard sciences”. Obviously I was a little annoyed, and just decided to make my own. I created Anthropology Major Fox, even though I wasn’t even in college yet, and the rest is history on that front.
Anthro Fox is how I became connected with the anthropology and archaeology communities on tumblr. People began messaging me wanting to follow my personal blog, I followed them back, we became great friends. Two people I met through Anthro Fox and the anthropology community on tumblr are now two of my best friends, and part of the reason I ended up at the University of Toronto. Probably close to a quarter of the people I follow on my personal tumblr are from the anthro community, and they are some of my greatest online friends. I’ve even met a few of them in real life, and exchanged post cards with people. So because of the amazing people I found in the tumblr anthropology and archaeology communities, I decided to actually become an anthropology major for real. Despite a few setbacks (like my first college not having a major, and then getting rid of the anthro minor halfway through the first semester) I ended up applying to U of T, and, like I said before, just finished my first year there studying Archaeology. My focus has shifted from anthropology to archaeology over the past few years because I’ve found I’m more interested in going on digs and analyzing lithics than ethnology and contemporary societies.
3. What do you enjoy about studying anthro, and what do you like about the discipline in general?
I love mind games and puzzles, and I like approaching archaeological analysis like a puzzle. I enjoy analyzing theories and seeing how people arrived at their conclusions based on the evidence found, and I enjoy drawing my own alternative conclusions. The possibilities for discussion and debate are a big draw for me, and I like the academic interaction I’ve been having in my studies. One of my favorite things about anthropology and archaeology in general is that its a discipline that attracts so many different people for so many different reasons. I have interacted with and become friends with so many people from all over the world from all different positions in society, but we all have things in common with our interest in anthropology and archaeology. I especially love the dedication to decolonizing the discipline that a lot of the younger generations of anthropologists and anthropology students, like myself, have. Its such an necessary step forward, and the fact that so many people make themselves conscious of the need for decolonization, and actively change their approaches to the discipline because of that awareness, makes me really happy.
4. Is there anything you don’t enjoy about studying anthro, or anything you dislike about the discipline?
Well, I’m not fond of Indiana Jones jokes. 
But on a more serious note, I do sometimes get frustrated with some of the strict adherence to flawed and problematic methodology that some anthropologists and archaeologists have. That kind of ties in with my focus on decolonizing the discipline. Because some anthropologists are still reluctant to admit that the discipline was founded as a tool of white imperialism and has led directly to the oppression of people from a lot of the cultures that were “studied”. So appropriation via anthropology, and a lack of recognition for the need for decolonization bothers me, but I have a good outlook on the way the discipline is moving forward with the help of the younger generations.
5. Do you have a favorite ethnography you would recommend reading? 
Well, I haven’t read many, since I am focusing on archaeology, but I did enjoy “Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman” by Marjorie Shostak. I read it on my own the summer after I took that first cultural anthropology course, because we had a reading from it in the course materials. I enjoyed the subject matter, and it was my first introduction to reflexive anthropology.
6. What are your goals for the future regarding studying and working in anthropology?
Had you asked me earlier in this past school year about what my interest in archaeology was, I would have said Sub-Roman British Archaeology, but as a result of taking a class with Dr. Michael Chazan I’ve discovered a love for paleoarchaeology, especially African paleoarch. Dr. Chazan works at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa, and his lectures on his findings made me realize how much I loved paleoarchaeology. So next year I’ll be taking more specialized courses in archaeology, with a focus on paleoarchaeology and field methods.
I’m not going to field school this summer, because I’m actually taking a full-year field school course that U of T is offering next year, but I will be applying to go to South Africa with Dr. Chazan next year. As for working, well, everyone knows how hard it is to predict what you’ll end up doing for work in anthropology and archaeology. I can just as easily see myself lecturing as a professor (but being that cool professor who swears and occasionally throws pencils at sleeping students), or working in the field for a long time. Whatever I end up doing, I just want to be enjoying my work.

Hey Anthro Foxes, the Massey University Anthropology blog did a spotlight on your shitty moderator!

Have fun reading about my boring life! And feel free to follow my personal blog, which is listed at the beginning of the post :]

Attention Anthro Foxes (and anyone else, really):

In light of the post I reblogged yesterday about abuse by superiors on field sites (and in other seasonal situations like internships, labs, and volunteer positions) I just wanted to let everyone know on here know that if you EVER find yourself in a position where you’re uncomfortable going to anyone within your immediate vicinity, and feel like you have no one to turn to, I am always here.

Feel free to message me through this blog, or on my personal if you know it (and you can message me for my personal blog if you’d like it). I know that the article might have scared some people, and thats actually quite a good thing. Well, not good that you’re scared, but good that you’re aware and thinking about your position in academia, labs, field sites, etc. All I wanted to do was let people know that, as the article says, its not just the oft-heard about athletic students who get taken advantage of. People in fields like anthropology, archaeology, and some of the other sciences, are put into positions where they are far from home and often in isolated areas with people they might not know well. This can be an amazing experience, but it can also be a recipe for abuse and harassment to go unnoticed or be ignored.

So, if you ever feel like you can’t talk to anyone at your job/field school/internship/lab and need advice on how to deal with a situation that you think might be abusive, or otherwise detrimental to your well-being, please don’t hesitate to contact me here on tumblr, or via my school email (which links to my personal one, so i’ll definitely see it):

liz.quinlan@mail.utoronto.ca

I just want to make sure you all know you can come to me. You’re like my babies (even though many of you are older than me, oops), and I don’t want anyone to get hurt or feel uncomfortable or have a bad experience, ever. I might not be able to come and give you a hug and make you hot chocolate, especially if you’re in South Africa or Jordan or something, but I can help you sort out your options, talk things over, and even make some inquiries at different departments at your school or whatever without your name being involved. 

Keep my email on a sticky note on your desktop, or in the back of your head, or bookmark this post or whatever. Remember that even though I might be a stranger, and we might never have talked before, I hope you can still trust me. I mean, i’m not asking you to give me your social security numbers and mother’s maiden names, just know that I’m a person behind a computer who can listen and maybe help.

Hey, I might be the worst mod ever (and I swear I’m gonna go through the inbox and put up some submissions, and I expect plenty of field school related submissions during this summer!), but I can still be helpful, right?

Okay, I love you all, muah, kisses:

BEL ESPRIT: Team reports on abuse of students doing anthropological fieldwork

bellaesprita:

University of Illinois anthropology professor Kathryn Clancy is one of four researchers to report on the psychological, physical and sexual abuse of students during field studies at remote sites in the field of biological anthropology. The team presents its findings at the 2013 meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropology. Credit: L. Brian Stauffer

image

College athletes are not the only ones who sometimes suffer at the hands of higher ups. A new report brings to light a more hidden and pernicious problem – the psychological, physical and sexual abuse of students in the field of biological anthropology working in field studies far from home.

The report is based on an  and telephone interviews that, in a period of less than two months, elicited accounts of abuse from dozens of women and men working in the field of . 

This is a first attempt to systematically document the harassment, abuse or assaults young researchers sometimes face in the course of doing anthropological fieldwork at remote sites, said University of Illinois anthropology professor Kathryn Clancy, one of four researchers to present the new findings at the 2013 meeting of the American Association of . 

Most students and postdoctoral researchers consider field research a stepping stone to a better career, Clancy said. 

“This is something that most biological anthropologists, cultural anthropologists and archeologists see as a fairly necessary experience,” she said. “Some people can do an entirely lab-based project or a computer modeling project or a local project, but most of us need to go into the field.” 

The team recruited subjects through outreach on social media and websites devoted to researchers in biological anthropology. They heard from 122 men and women, more than half of whom had experienced or witnessed ,  or  at the hands of site managers, project directors or peers living and working at field research sites. The researchers defined sexual assault as “any kind of inappropriate physical contact, unwanted physical touching, assault, all the way up to rape,” Clancy said. 

“Overwhelmingly, we’re seeing junior women being targeted by senior men,” Clancy said. “59 percent of respondents have experienced sexual harassment. Women are 3 times more likely to experience harassment than men. And 19 percent of respondents have been sexually assaulted.” 

The perpetrators of the harassment and assaults were usually men, but some women also abused their students. One female site director, for example, refused to let women leave the work site to urinate. 

The researchers did not directly ask the respondents if they had been raped, but some of the respondents volunteered that they had been raped by research leaders or peers at fieldwork sites. Others reported that they had witnessed the systematic targeting of junior members of the research team for harassment or assault. 

Such working conditions can have devastating effects on the health and wellbeing of those who are targeted and those who witness the abuse, Clancy said. They also force students to choose between their career goals and their desire to speak up for themselves or others. 

Clancy and her colleagues noticed that larger, more organized research sites tended to have fewer incidents of abuse, harassment or assault than smaller, less formal fieldwork sites. Those who worked on teams that included women in leadership positions also reported less harassment and abuse. Some respondents said they noticed an uptick in abusive behavior when female leaders were absent. 

“The larger a field site, the more organized you have to be, so you’re more likely to actually have ground rules or a code of conduct, or a chain of command that prevents people from feeling they can get away with bad behavior,” Clancy said. 

The researchers are proposing that funding agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health require the same kinds of protocols and oversight of researcher safety in the field that are routine in the laboratory. 

“If we want to fund a postdoctoral researcher, we have to write a postdoc mentoring plan so that we prove that this postdoc isn’t just going to be a lackey for us and that we’re actually going to mentor them and train them and help them get a job,” Clancy said. “I have to make sure my students have access to certain kinds of vaccines if they’re working with blood. We have to go through Institutional Review Boards to protect our research subjects. We have to go through animal protocols to protect our animals. But we don’t have to protect our researchers in the field.”

Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

TW: rape, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, harassment

A heads up to everyone going to field schools this summer: just because someone is your supervisor or somehow “superior” to you on the site, does NOT mean that they can get away with abuse or harassment. 

Always remember that YOU are the most important person in your life, and that if you feel that you can, you SHOULD speak up. Always make sure you have someone you trust that you are corresponding with and who you can tell about any problems you have. 

The well-being of subjects and sites is important, but so is YOUR well-being as a researcher. Don’t ever forget that, and please never put aside your own safety because you think reporting something might endanger your future in the field.

(via anthrocentric)

In spite of varying attempts at revision and reform, anthropology remains overwhelmingly a Western intellectual— and ideological— project that is embedded in relations of power which favor class sections and historical blocs belonging to or with allegiances to the world’s White minority. While these global relations no longer adhere to classical colonial principles or forms, they retain, nonetheless, the basic substance of colonial control…

…Can an authentic anthropology emerge from the critical intellectual traditions and counter-hegemonic struggles of Third World peoples? Can a genuine study of humankind arise from dialogues, debates, and reconciliations amongst various non-Western and Western intellectuals— both those with formal credentials and those with other socially meaningful and appreciated qualifications? Is genuine dialogue and reconciliation possible, and, if so, under what conditions? … Questions such as these should be taken to heart by anthropologists preparing themselves for the global challenges and crises of the 21st century.

—

“Anthropology As An Agent of Transformation: Introductory comments and queries” by Faye V. Harrison.

From “Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further Toward an Anthropology for Liberation”, published 1997 in affiliation with the Association of Black Anthropologists and the American Anthropological Association.

Still fucking relavent today.

PSA: Apparently Saskatchewan is weird and doesn’t follow Daylight Savings Time, so the chat thing hasn’t started officially yet. But there’s some people hanging out while we wait for Sam to arrive when her bus gets to campus!

REMINDER!

In about an hour the 2nd Tumblr Anthropologists/University of Regina/Whoever chat will be occurring!

If you’re interested, message saamantha for the deetz~~

[TOMORRROWWW!] Calling All Anthropologists II!

saamantha:

Please note that I was unable to reach my professor to get the list of names for presently working anthropology undergraduates. He’s on sabbatical, and I don’t know where he is haha. 

SO. We WILL be discussing how to tailor a cover letter and resume for anthropology graduates. This will probably be brief, as I’d really love to have a discussion about the Veronica Mars Kickstarter (because I’m a geek), and then open the “virtual floor” for some more discussion about our programs and our interests. 

Tomorrow, tinychat.com/uofrcasa, send me an ask for the password. We’ll be there at 4:45PM CST! 

saamantha:

Hey everyone! 
The video conference that we held on February 13th was what I would call a success. We had about 11 participants in the chat, and about 8 people from my university’s students’ association in attendance. It served as an introductory experience, for the most part. We discussed our program interests, course offerings at other colleges and universities and papers and research we have done in the past. 

I know that quite a few of you could not attend, so we’re holding a second conference. I personally found it to be a very helpful session, as it created a network of people I might not have had access to otherwise. 

So here is the plan:

We’ll be meeting at www.tinychat.com/uofrcasa on March 20, 2013 at 4:45PM. I have a physical room booked on campus until 6:30PM, but we may be around longer than that if we can get a good discussion going! If Wednesdays don’t work for you, please let me know ASAP, so that I can try to book a room for another day! I also know that most of us will be in the middle of writing exams and papers, but sometimes procrastinating can give us the intellectual boost we need to get shit done.

This chatroom will still be password protected, so please send me an ask or an email at uofrcasa @ gmail.com.

(Source: saamanthro, via anthrocentric)

Calling all anthropologists!! (The Second)

saamantha:

Hey everyone! 
The video conference that we held on February 13th was what I would call a success. We had about 11 participants in the chat, and about 8 people from my university’s students’ association in attendance. It served as an introductory experience, for the most part. We discussed our program interests, course offerings at other colleges and universities and papers and research we have done in the past. 

I know that quite a few of you could not attend, so we’re holding a second conference. I personally found it to be a very helpful session, as it created a network of people I might not have had access to otherwise. 

So here is the plan:

We’ll be meeting at www.tinychat.com/uofrcasa on March 20, 2013 at 4:45PM. I have a physical room booked on campus until 6:30PM, but we may be around longer than that if we can get a good discussion going! If Wednesdays don’t work for you, please let me know ASAP, so that I can try to book a room for another day! I also know that most of us will be in the middle of writing exams and papers, but sometimes procrastinating can give us the intellectual boost we need to get shit done.

This one WILL have a theme. One of my professors who logged on two weeks ago has sent me a list of students who graduated with a BA in anthropology from the U of R, who all have jobs related to anthropology at a post-graduate level. I’m hoping they’ll be able to give us all some valuable information on the jobs that are available to anthropology majors. 

This chatroom will still be password protected, so please send me an ask or an email at uofrcasa @ gmail.com.

I was there last time, and will definitely be attending next week.

Come join me, Anthro Foxes!

(Source: saamanthro)

nitanahkohe: beyondvictoriana: Ishi (ca. 1860 – March 25, 1916) was the last member of the Yahi, the last surviving group of the Yana people of the U.S. state of California. Widely acclaimed in his time as the “last wild Indian” in America, Ishi lived most of his life completely outside European American culture. At about 49 years old, in 1911 he emerged from the wild near Oroville, California, leaving his ancestral homeland, present-day Tehama County, near the foothills of Lassen Peak, known to Ishi as “Wa ganu p’a”. Ishi means “man” in the Yana language. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave this name to the man because it was rude to ask someone’s name in the Yahi culture. When asked his name, he said: “I have none, because there were no people to name me,” meaning that no Yahi had ever spoken his name. He was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who both studied him and hired him as a research assistant. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco.(via Wikipedia) as i have said before Ishi was NOT the “last of the Yahi;” there are living people of Yahi descent today (most of which are members of other recognized tribes). at Berkeley, there’s this disgusting obsession with Kroeber (there’s a building named after him) and romanticization of Ishi as the “last of the Yahi”…the story gets used to legitimate a nasty rewriting of colonial history & anthropologists in NorCal, totally decontextualized from the realities of genocide in the region and constructed mostly to both worship and canonize Kroeber’s racist exploitative ethnographic work and place Ishi (as he is remembered and constructed by white social scientists) on a pedestal as model Good Indian—tragic, simple, and happy to exist beneath and solely for white academics. stop celebrating this genocidal narrative on noble savages and total extinction The case of Ishi is an extremely important reminder to modern anthropologists of the colonial and exploitative origins of our field.  Decolonizing Anthropology is an important task that we are still working on, and our generation of anthropologists (and archaeologists) has an important job. We must recognize and denounce the racist and colonialist actions and history of Anthropology, while investing time in decolonizing ethnographic methods.  Academia can be a dangerous and exploitative place to inhabit. We can’t let ourselves get caught up in trying to legitimize and excuse the actions of past anthropologists. That is not acceptable. We can study their work, and appreciate some of their methods, but on a whole we must realize that they are generally not to be emulated. 

nitanahkohe:

beyondvictoriana:

Ishi (ca. 1860 – March 25, 1916) was the last member of the Yahi, the last surviving group of the Yana people of the U.S. state of California. Widely acclaimed in his time as the “last wild Indian” in America, Ishi lived most of his life completely outside European American culture. At about 49 years old, in 1911 he emerged from the wild near Oroville, California, leaving his ancestral homeland, present-day Tehama County, near the foothills of Lassen Peak, known to Ishi as “Wa ganu p’a”.

Ishi means “man” in the Yana language. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave this name to the man because it was rude to ask someone’s name in the Yahi culture. When asked his name, he said: “I have none, because there were no people to name me,” meaning that no Yahi had ever spoken his name. He was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who both studied him and hired him as a research assistant. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco.

(via Wikipedia)

as i have said before

Ishi was NOT the “last of the Yahi;” there are living people of Yahi descent today (most of which are members of other recognized tribes). at Berkeley, there’s this disgusting obsession with Kroeber (there’s a building named after him) and romanticization of Ishi as the “last of the Yahi”…the story gets used to legitimate a nasty rewriting of colonial history & anthropologists in NorCal, totally decontextualized from the realities of genocide in the region and constructed mostly to both worship and canonize Kroeber’s racist exploitative ethnographic work and place Ishi (as he is remembered and constructed by white social scientists) on a pedestal as model Good Indian—tragic, simple, and happy to exist beneath and solely for white academics.

stop celebrating this genocidal narrative on noble savages and total extinction

The case of Ishi is an extremely important reminder to modern anthropologists of the colonial and exploitative origins of our field. 

Decolonizing Anthropology is an important task that we are still working on, and our generation of anthropologists (and archaeologists) has an important job. We must recognize and denounce the racist and colonialist actions and history of Anthropology, while investing time in decolonizing ethnographic methods. 

Academia can be a dangerous and exploitative place to inhabit. We can’t let ourselves get caught up in trying to legitimize and excuse the actions of past anthropologists. That is not acceptable. We can study their work, and appreciate some of their methods, but on a whole we must realize that they are generally not to be emulated. 

(via digatisdi)

anthropologymajorfox: saamantha: One more time, folks! This is happening NEXT week! The response I’ve had has been amazing, but I’m having trouble sending an individual ask to all of you who have liked or reblogged the original and follow up posts. If you’re interested in joining us, please send me an ask so that I can send you the password!!If there is a demand for it, and everyone participating gives the go ahead, I’m hoping to be able to provide a transcript for those of you that won’t be able to make it. AND, if there’s enough interest, perhaps we can hold a second ‘conference’ in March. I’ll talk with all of you awesome anthropologists soon! Once again, here’s more information on the virtual discussion event being held next week. I’ll most definitely be there! REMINDER: This is today! In about an hour or so!

anthropologymajorfox:

saamantha:

One more time, folks! This is happening NEXT week! The response I’ve had has been amazing, but I’m having trouble sending an individual ask to all of you who have liked or reblogged the original and follow up posts. If you’re interested in joining us, please send me an ask so that I can send you the password!!
If there is a demand for it, and everyone participating gives the go ahead, I’m hoping to be able to provide a transcript for those of you that won’t be able to make it. AND, if there’s enough interest, perhaps we can hold a second ‘conference’ in March. 

I’ll talk with all of you awesome anthropologists soon!

Once again, here’s more information on the virtual discussion event being held next week. I’ll most definitely be there!

REMINDER: This is today! In about an hour or so!

(Source: saamanthro)

Radical Roy: How racist is American anthropology? Why does anthropology tend to...

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 bookReversed 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.

This is VERY important.

(via swellshark)

saamantha: One more time, folks! This is happening NEXT week! The response I’ve had has been amazing, but I’m having trouble sending an individual ask to all of you who have liked or reblogged the original and follow up posts. If you’re interested in joining us, please send me an ask so that I can send you the password!!If there is a demand for it, and everyone participating gives the go ahead, I’m hoping to be able to provide a transcript for those of you that won’t be able to make it. AND, if there’s enough interest, perhaps we can hold a second ‘conference’ in March. I’ll talk with all of you awesome anthropologists soon! Once again, here’s more information on the virtual discussion event being held next week. I’ll most definitely be there!

saamantha:

One more time, folks! This is happening NEXT week! The response I’ve had has been amazing, but I’m having trouble sending an individual ask to all of you who have liked or reblogged the original and follow up posts. If you’re interested in joining us, please send me an ask so that I can send you the password!!
If there is a demand for it, and everyone participating gives the go ahead, I’m hoping to be able to provide a transcript for those of you that won’t be able to make it. AND, if there’s enough interest, perhaps we can hold a second ‘conference’ in March. 

I’ll talk with all of you awesome anthropologists soon!

Once again, here’s more information on the virtual discussion event being held next week. I’ll most definitely be there!

(Source: saamanthro, via theladygoogle)

Calling all anthropologists! (An updated version)

saamantha:

For those of you who had expressed interest in a video conference call with fellow anthropology students from around the world, I have more information for you!

This will be taking place on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 at 5PM CST. We’re hoping to host an online chat via tinychat, so that those without video/audio capabilities will still be able to participate and ask questions. 

It will be a password protected room located at tinychat.com/uofrcasa. I’m hoping that password protection will keep the group limited to those who are truly engaged. If you’re interested in participating, please send me an ask or an email (uofrcasa at gmail) so I can send you the password!

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I’m a 4th year student studying Cultural Anthropology at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. I’m the President of our Cultural Anthropology Students’ Association. 

It is our hope at the University of Regina to engage anthropology students from around the world in a discussion related to our fields of interest. We are interested in expanding our academic bubble by contacting undergraduates, graduates and Ph.D students with interests in other branches of anthropology. 

We don’t want this to be an intimidating discussion, but one that allows students who are interested in anthropology to find out about other educational institutions, professors, grad programs etc.

Hey Anthro Foxes, interested in this discussion?

I definitely am, and I will probably be participating in it :]

So, head on over to saamantha’s ask box for the password, you mangy bunch of canids!

(Source: saamanthro)

thiswug: /ðɪs ɪz ə wʌg/. /ðɪs wʌg ɪz tɹ̩nɪŋ əraʊnd/! /blæsfəmi/!!! this is wug. this wug is turning around! blasphemy!!!

thiswug:

/ðɪs ɪz ə wʌg/.

/ðɪs wʌg ɪz tɹ̩nɪŋ əraʊnd/!
/blæsfəmi/!!!
this is wug. this wug is turning around! blasphemy!!!

(via dakreeeets)