Anthropology

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  Topix: Anthropology

• UCSC ranks high for Peace Corps volunteers

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:05 am

  In June, UC Santa Cruz graduate Martin Case is leaving the cheese department of New Leaf Community Markets for a two-year stint in the Peace Corps, working with banks and microlenders in the West African country of Cameroon.

• Designing financial services for the poor

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:19 am

  The Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at the University of California, Irvine, headed by Bill Maurer , Professor of Anthropology, aims to foster a community of inquiry and practice on new forms of money and financial technology among the worlda s poorest people: those who live on less than $1 per day.

• California Tree Carving Hints at Early Chumash Astronomy

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:05 am

  The counterclockwise rotation of stars around Polaris as viewed from Painted Rock in Carrizo Plain, Calif.

• Everett to be ISU's first University Professor

  9 Feb 2010 | 12:01 am

  ISUa s own Dr. Daniel Everett, chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, has been named ISUa s first University Professor, a title that honors faculty members who are nationally recognized scholars and teachers.

• Cheap stuff: Fancywork Day, 'Carnival'

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:01 pm

  Learn about sewing and other craft skills at Fancywork Day at Kline Creek Farm. Courtesy of Kline Creek Farm Step back in time to the 1800s during the Fireside Fun event at the Durant House Museum in St.

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  Yahoo! News: Anthropology

• Drinking, Smoking Often Intertwine for Students (PhysOrg)

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:28 am

  (PhysOrg.com) -- Mark and Mimi Nichter have published a series of articles recently about the smoking behaviors of college students, offering important insights about smoking related to drinking, gender and stress.

• Colleges talk cuts, taxes (San Mateo Daily Journal)

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:15 am

  Plans to cut over $7 million from the three community colleges means reductions in class offerings and opportunities for faculty to teach but officials hope to achieve the goal of maintaining core curriculum.

• K-State students work passionately, proud to be purple (Kansas State Collegian)

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:10 am

  By: Tyler Sharp K-State’s student-led philanthropic campaign began its fourth year with the annual K-State PROUD Volunteer Kick-Off Event last night in the K-State Student Union. The campaign’s student-oriented mentality was on display as numerous students cr...

• California Tree Carving Hints at Early Chumash Astronomy (Time Magazine)

  9 Feb 2010 | 2:49 am

  Hidden behind property signs, a California tree carving has become an eloquent clue to the science of the Chumash people, whose descendants still live in the state

• UCSC ranks high for Peace Corps volunteers (Santa Cruz Sentinel)

  9 Feb 2010 | 1:46 am

  SANTA CRUZ -- In June, UC Santa Cruz graduate Martin Case is leaving the cheese department of New Leaf Community Markets for a two-year stint in the Peace Corps, working with banks and microlenders in the West African country of Cameroon.

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  Anthropology.net

• The Great Southern Migration Theory: Some Thoughts on Y-hap T and Boating Technology – by Terry Toohill

  Tim Jones

  29 Jan 2010 | 5:09 am

  The Wikipedia entry for Y-chromosome haplogroup T claims: “The distribution of haplogroup T in most parts of Europe is spotty or regionalized”. As it is through much of the rest of the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_T_(Y-DNA) However from the map at Wiki we can see that Y-hap T is largely distributed along coastlines and up major river systems. Haplogroup T Time of origin 25,000-30,000 years BP Place of origin Asia[1] Ancestor K Defining mutations USP9Y+3178=M184, M70, M193, M272 Highest frequencies SaccensiSiciliansFulbeEivissencsStilfserTyroleansXibeEgyptiansGaditanos I…

• Reduced Brain Size of Homo floresiensis Hints at Her Likely Ancestors

  Tim Jones

  28 Jan 2010 | 12:24 pm

  See also: Is Homo floresiensis really that strange? – Zinjanthropus@ A Primate of Modern Aspect A new, detailed and freely accessible paper, Reconstructing the Ups and Downs of Primate Brain Evolution: Implications for Adaptive Hypotheses and Homo floresiensis (provisional PDF) has just come online at BMC Biology, in which Stephen H. Montgomery et al discuss the reduced brain-size of Homo floresiensis, and suggest she is unlikely to have descended from Homo erectus, for which this is the abstract: Background Brain size is a key adaptive trait. It is often assumed that increasing brain…

• Four Stone Hearth #85: Cold Wind Edition at A Very Remote Period Indeed

  Tim Jones

  27 Jan 2010 | 10:04 pm

  Julien has posted the current edition of Four Stone Hearth over at his blog, marking the 85th occasion on which this anthropology blog carnival has appeared online. There’s a distinct archaeological feel to the opening section, including mention of the Silk Road, something I’ve been mulling over of late, but I certainly hadn’t heard of someone cutting themselves a pair of trousers from a tapestry – it’s good to know that people were ignoring basic rules of fashion back then as we do today. Also mentioned is Second Life, and a consideration of how people may have…

• The Archaeology Channel – “Timeless India” by Zafar Hai

  Tim Jones

  27 Jan 2010 | 10:55 am

  The Archaeology Channel – Timeless India TAC have made available a 25-minute promotional film produced and directed by Zafar Hai on behalf of the Ministry of Tourism in India, and narrated by no less a luminary than Michael York. Featuring many historic locations and exotic sights such as temples, this film is aimed more at the visitor to India keen on exploring her multi-faceted past, much of which has survived intact to the present day, and which can often be found resting gracefully amongst the modern cities that have sprung up in what has become one of the world’s largest and…

• Wednesday Round-up at Neuroanthropology – Videogaming/ 100th Edition

  Tim Jones

  27 Jan 2010 | 6:29 am

  As readers here may be aware, recent reports from the world of neuroscience with an anthropological slant are assembled every Wednesday over at Neuroanthropology, and this week’s edition includes, amongst many others: Chris Kelty et al., Outlaw Biology? Public Participation in the Age of Big Bio Looks like a fascinating symposium this coming Friday and Saturday (Jan 20th & 30th) at UCLA. Plus just a fun site to explore. Mary Hrovat, Civilization Founded on Beer? “Patrick McGovern, an archaeologist who studies human exploration of fermented beverages, believes that it might have…

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  Savage Minds

• Food Allergies and Modern Life

  Dustin (Oneman)

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  20 years ago, I knew hardly anyone with a food allergy. Shellfish and strawberries were the only foods I’d ever heard of someone being allergic to. Then, suddenly, airlines were replacing peanuts with pretzels because of food allergies, and food started being labeled “Processed in a facility that also processes tree nuts.” A few years later, I met someone who was allergic to wheat. Pretty soon, it seemed like everyone I knew was allergic to something – gluten, lactose, chocolate, and a gazillion other things. How can we explain this epidemic of food allergies? The radical shift from…

• Savage Minds Around the Web

  jay sosa

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:22 pm

  Third Quarter Review: Hortense at jezebel.com took time out from the cheese balls and the nacho dip to file a report on the Superbowl 2010 commercials. Complete with embedded clips, Hortense shows that this year’s batch is dedicated to selling emasculated men products that will help them win back their manhood. Haiti in Fragments: I just got tipped off about the blog on Social Text’s website. Check out the collection of essays written last month by various scholars on (re)considering Haiti, its exceptional history, and its place in a world system. Development of Memory: English…

• Receivership: Berkley Anthro or DDR?

  ckelty

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:30 am

  I haven’t been blogging about the crisis in the UC system, mostly because excellent blogging is going on elsewhere (see esp. Chris Newfield and others at Remaking the University if you are interested). But when it intersects with anthropology, it warrants our attention. Paul Rabinow forwarded this tantalizing, if brief, note about what’s going on in Berkeley… The Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley has been in a kind of unofficial receivership for a growing number of years now. The reason I can claim this is that we no longer choose our own chair (while this was always…

• What is happening to the obsession with culture?

  Joana and Pal

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:40 am

  In our previous post, we suggested that, in “the development field,” culture talk may already look different from the time we wrote Seeing Culture Everywhere, and that the kind of para-ethnographic approach we argue for is gaining ground. What about the rest of the areas of public and corporate policy we cover in the book? Huntingtonianism still rules in IR In international relations, there is little evidence of cultural determinism becoming less popular at the level of explanations, although with the shifts in U.S. foreign policy rhetoric and the fatigue that has set in regarding…

• Culture in Development

  Joana and Pal

  4 Feb 2010 | 11:18 pm

  This was supposed to be the title of one of the chapters in Seeing Culture Everywhere, except in the final proof it somehow got reduced to just “Culture,” which in a way is a more striking title. The chapter describes two types of “culture talk” in the world of development professionals: one, exemplified by Lawrence Harrison’s Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, that sees certain national cultures as development-prone and others as development-resistant, and another, reflected in Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton’s excellent Culture and Public Action, that takes a…

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  ScienceDaily: Anthropology

• Did bacteria develop into more complex cells much earlier in evolution than thought?

  8 Feb 2010 | 8:00 am

  Biochemists have described the process by which bacteria developed into more complex cells and found this crucial step happened much earlier in the evolutionary timeline than previously thought.

• Ancient human teeth show that stress early in development can shorten life span

  4 Feb 2010 | 11:00 pm

  Ancient human teeth are telling secrets that may relate to modern-day health: Some stressful events that occurred early in development are linked to shorter lifespans. "Prehistoric remains are providing strong, physical evidence that people who acquired tooth enamel defects while in the womb or early childhood tended to die earlier, even if they survived to adulthood," says anthropologist George Armelagos, who recently published the first summary of prehistoric evidence for the Barker hypothesis.

• Last ancestor humans shared with worms had sophisticated brain, microRNAs show

  2 Feb 2010 | 5:00 pm

  The last ancestor we shared with worms, which roamed the seas around 600 million years ago, may already have had a sophisticated brain. Fossils cannot give us this information, but scientists have obtained it by studying small molecules called microRNAs.

• DNA testing on 2,000-year-old bones in Italy reveal East Asian ancestry

  2 Feb 2010 | 2:00 pm

  Researchers excavating an ancient Roman cemetery were surprised when DNA testing on a set of bones revealed East Asian ancestry.

• Developmental delay may explain behavior of easygoing bonobo apes

  29 Jan 2010 | 8:00 am

  New research suggests that evolutionary changes in cognitive development underlie the extensive social and behavioral differences that exist between two closely related species of great apes. The study enhances our understanding of our two closest living relatives, chimpanzees and the lesser-known bonobos, and may provide key insight into human evolution.

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  NYT: Anthropology

• Evidence Builds on Color of Dinosaurs

  4 Feb 2010 | 9:00 pm

  For the second time in two weeks, paleontologists provided insight into what the prehistoric creatures looked like.

• Study Offers an Insight Into Dinosaur Colors

  27 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm

  Fossilized structures of what appear to be feathers match the feathers of living birds down to the microscopic level, and from them scientists have determined what color the ancient feathers were.

• Neanderthal Decorative Shells Found in Southeastern Spain

  11 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm

  New findings suggest that Neanderthals may have been capable of symbolic thinking.

• The Americanization of Mental Illness

  9 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm

  In recent years, American ideas about psychiatric disorders have spread around the globe. Is that really good for the world’s mental health?

• Foraging Early Humans Did Not Pass Up Grains

  21 Dec 2009 | 9:00 pm

  Humans were eating sorghum grasses at least 105,000 years ago, an archaeologist reports.

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  Dienekes Anthropology Blog

• mtDNA of Uzbekistan

  dienekesp

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:00 am

  International Journal of Legal Medicine doi:10.1007/s00414-009-0406-zThe mtDNA composition of Uzbekistan: a microcosm of Central Asian patternsJodi A. Irwin et al.AbstractIn order to better characterize and understand the mtDNA population genetics of Central Asia, the mtDNA control regions of over 1,500 individuals from Uzbekistan have been sequenced. Although all samples were obtained from individuals residing in Uzbekistan, individuals with direct ancestry from neighboring Central Asian countries are included. Individuals of Uzbek ancestry represent five distinct geographic regions of…

• mtDNA of Cres Islanders

  dienekesp

  7 Feb 2010 | 11:00 am

  Coll Antropol. 2009 Dec;33(4):1323-8.Mitochondrial DNA heritage of Cres Islanders--example of Croatian genetic outliers.Jeran N, Havas Augustin D, Grahovac B, Kapović M, Metspalu E, Villems R, Rudan P.Diversity of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages of the Island of Cres was determined by high-resolution phylogenetic analysis on a sample of 119 adult unrelated individuals from eight settlements. The composition of mtDNA pool of this Island population is in contrast with other Croatian and European populations. The analysis revealed the highest frequency of haplogroup U (29.4%) with the…

• X-chromosome variation in global populations

  dienekesp

  6 Feb 2010 | 11:00 am

  The frappe analysis for K=7 using ~16k and ~19k X chromosome (top) and Chromosome 16 (bottom) SNPs is shown. The pattern is almost identical.This showcases the fallacy of a common objection to the concept of "race", namely that it is "trait-specific" and by looking at one trait (or locus) we will arrive at one racial classification, while looking at another wew will arrive at another.The fact that by looking at two completely independently inherited pieces of DNA we arrive at the same conclusion is strong visual evidence that race is neither (a) a subjective property which depends on which…

• mtDNA in Iberian Northern Plateau

  dienekesp

  5 Feb 2010 | 11:00 am

  Am J Phys Anthropol doi:10.1002/ajpa.21252Mitochondrial DNA patterns in the Iberian Northern plateau: Population dynamics and substructure of the Zamora provinceLuis Alvarez et al.ABSTRACTSeveral studies have shown the importance of recent events in the configuration of the genetic landscape of a specific territory. In this context, due to the phenomena of repopulation and demographic fluctuations that took place in recent centuries, the Iberian Northern plateau is a very interesting case study. The main aim of this work is to check if recent population movements together with existing…

• Charles Darwin belonged to Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b

  dienekesp

  4 Feb 2010 | 11:00 am

  Not very surprising given his nationality. I guess there is a small chance of a non-paternity event in 4 transmission events, so the result is probably not as good as e.g., exhuming Charles Darwin himself and testing him directly, but that's probably just nitpicking.DISCOVERING THE ORIGINS OF CHARLES DARWINToday, 200 years after his birth, DNA technology has helped determine who Darwin’s ancient ancestors were. Darwin’s great-great-grandson, Chris Darwin, 48, who lives in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, took a Genographic Project public participation cheek swab test analyzing his “Y”…

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  Open Anthropology

• New Details Emerge in Salomi Hostage Case: John Stanton

  Maximilian Forte

  8 Feb 2010 | 9:58 pm

  New Details Emerge in Salomi Hostage Case: High Drama in HTS by John Stanton Monday, 08 February, 2010 Observers indicate that two individuals in HTS leadership positions on the ground in Iraq—Lieutenant Colonel Byrd (Program Management Office – FWD)  and Michael Goains, GG-15 (Theater Coordination Element) had direct knowledge of Issa Salomi’s prior forays outside Camp Liberty/Victory Base Complex in Iraq unaccompanied by his teammates (team designation IZ-02,) or US military personnel. Salomi was apparently taken by an Iraqi insurgent group in January 2010 and a video of…

• Iraqi Insurgents Capture Human Terrain System Member: John Stanton

  Maximilian Forte

  7 Feb 2010 | 5:50 pm

  Iraqi Insurgents Capture Human Terrain Team Member: Issa T. Salomi by John Stanton Sunday, 07 February 2010 Steve Fondacaro and Montgomery Carlough, senior program management of the US Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS), were warned as early as 2007 that Human Terrain Team members in Iraq and Afghanistan would become prey for insurgent groups. They were advised repeatedly that training must emphasize the dangerous environment HTS employees would be operating in. That training needed to  focus on  practices and procedures for handling life threatening situations to include kidnapping.

• ACTION ALERT: Sign the Anthropologists’ Statement on the Human Terrain System

  Maximilian Forte

  31 Jan 2010 | 4:46 pm

  From the NETWORK OF CONCERNED ANTHROPOLOGISTS, 27 January 2010: Dear Fellow Anthropologists, The US Congress is currently evaluating and considering the expansion of the Pentagon’s Human Terrain System (HTS) program, in which anthropologists have been recruited to assist with counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq [see here, here and here for more background]. Please join us in expressing our firm opposition to the program and any expansion by agreeing to add your signature to the attached “Anthropologists’ Statement on the Human Terrain System Program.”…

• John Stanton: The New Face of the Human Terrain System

  Maximilian Forte

  22 Jan 2010 | 7:34 am

  The New Face of the Human Terrain System: Goin’ to Kansas City on 1 April 2010. by John Stanton US Army Human Terrain System (HTS) principals recently produced a number of briefings adding up to a total of 133-pages of MS PowerPoint slides (pdf 3.6 Mb). For convenience’s sake here, we’ll use the title of the first presentation titled The Future: Training Directorate Executive Overview, 08 January 2010 (The Future) as the overall title for the series. The presentations contain a dizzying array of information, mostly in living color. They are audacious and excellent documents whose…

• So much to write, so little time…

  Maximilian Forte

  16 Jan 2010 | 10:41 pm

  While the Zero Series of essays was (and still is) intended to be the mode by which this blog comes to a close (so that I can move on to other projects, more below), it seems that will take much longer than expected. Though the series is based on lecture notes and readings assigned for a graduate course that I taught, writing the materials up into essay form can take up to three days in some cases, usually lengthier than most conference papers, and time is lacking right now. It is more likely that the closing series will be resumed in May. Between now and then, a number of posts will appear…

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  antropologi.info

• University reforms - a threat to anthropology?

  Lorenz

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:52 pm

  It started around 20 years ago: The idea of education as a right was being replaced by a concept of education as a commodity to purchase. Today’s universities are managed like businesses, striving for “excellence", being best, competing for the “best” brains with new logos and slogans like The University of Manchester is pioneering, influential and exciting. What are the consequences of the focus on competition instead of cooperation, quantity instead of quality, bureaucratic control instead of academic freedom and what can be done about it? In the new issue of the…

• Pecha Kucha - the future of presenting papers?

  Lorenz

  25 Jan 2010 | 4:09 pm

  Why reading your paper when there are lot more exciting ways of presenting your research? I have asked Aleksandra Bartoszko and Marcy Hessling to tell us about their experience with a recent experiment at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association last december. They attended a panel where papers were not read but presented via 20 images that were displayed for 20 seconds each. After 6 minutes and 40 seconds the show is over and the discussion can begin. This way of presenting is getting more and more popular around the world and is called Pecha Kucha. Pecha Kucha…

• Why Siberian nomads cope so well with climate change

  Lorenz

  19 Jan 2010 | 2:38 pm

  The tundra ecosystems in Siberia are vulnerable to both climate change and oil/gass drilling. Yet the Yamal-Nenets in West Siberia have shown remarkable resilience to these changes. “Free access to open space has been the key for success” says Bruce Forbes of the University of Lapland, Finland, Environmental Research Web reports. Forbes and five colleagues from various disciplines (including anthropology) at the University of Joensuu, Finland, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the University of Cambridge, UK, have studied the Yamal-Nenets for more than four years. The research…

• Haiti Earthquake: Worldwide solidarity, a common humanity? (updated)

  Lorenz

  14 Jan 2010 | 8:17 pm

  (Hatiain Children up in the mountains. Image: Matt Dringenberg, flickr) (updated 18.1.10: post in progress about anthropological perspectives in Haiti and how to help) “Anthropology to me is all about human connexions, about a common humanity", said Dai Cooper from the Anthropology Song. “Being an anthropologist means that when a natural disaster occurs somewhere in the world, a friend may be there", is a quote I found on the blog by urban anthropologist Krystal D’Costa. “The recent catastrophic earthquake in Haiti has turned my thoughts to our global levels of…

• The globalisation of the Western conception of mental illness

  Lorenz

  13 Jan 2010 | 5:50 pm

  As Greg Downey at Neuroanthropology.net, I was kept awake until late at night by an article in the New York Times Magazine - yesterday for reading, today for writing. It is a fascinating article about a kind of globalisation that isn’t talked about much outside the university, written by Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, released two days ago. It’s about the globalisation of the Western conception of mental health and illness “We have for many years been busily engaged in a grand project of Americanizing the world’s…

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  Material World

• `Fas’ book (Facebook) in Trinidad

  Haidy L Geismar

  7 Feb 2010 | 9:33 am

  Daniel Miller, UCL I have always been drawn to anthropological research I never intended to undertake, but just couldn’t help myself. I am writing this towards the end of a period of fieldwork in Trinidad. I am here with Mirca Madianou to study the way new media impact upon transnational relationships in comparison with research undertaken last year in the Philippines which we are working up as a book, probably to be called Distant Parenting. But I just know that I wont be able to stop myself writing at least some papers if not a book about Facebook in Trinidad, because the country seems in…

• Call for papers:

  Patrick Laviolette

  4 Feb 2010 | 3:23 pm

  WHAT ARE SURFACES? Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers London, 1st-3rd September 2010 www.rgs.org/AC2010 Session organisers: Isla Forsyth (University of Glasgow), James Robinson (Aberystwyth University), Hayden Lorimer (University of Glasgow), Peter Merriman (Aberystwyth University) Geographers have long been concerned with describing and understanding the Earth’s surface, and the social and environmental interactions which it enables or constrains. Recently, creative approaches have produced myriad explanations of surface patterns,…

• Asian/Pacific American Documentary Heritage Archives Survey

  Haidy L Geismar

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:38 pm

  http://dlibdev.nyu.edu/tamimentapa/ The Asian/Pacific American Documentary Heritage Archives Survey is the first systematic attempt to map available and potential Asian/Pacific American archival collections in the New York metropolitan area. The project seeks to address the underrepresentation of East Coast Asian America in historic scholarship and archives by working with community-based organizations and individuals to survey their records and raise awareness within the community about the importance of documenting and preserving their histories. There are some amazing archival resources…

• Smithsonian Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology

  Aaron J Glass

  1 Feb 2010 | 2:05 pm

  Dear Colleagues – I am pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA), a research training initiative launched in 2009 by the Smithsonian Department of Anthropology with support from the National Science Foundation. SIMA is an intensive four-week training program that teaches graduate students how to use museum collections in research, incorporating Smithsonian collections as an integral part of their anthropological training. Support from the Cultural Anthropology Program at NSF covers full tuition and living expenses for…

• The return of the Wittelsbach Diamond—or is it?

  Aaron J Glass

  30 Jan 2010 | 12:51 pm

  Does the recutting of a famous gemstone—improving its luster and increasing its market value—fundamentally alter its identity as a historical artifact by erasing signs of use? Which temporary owners of an object get to decide whether and how to alter it, not to mention add their own names to its official title? Conservators erase layers of dirt and grime all the time, improving the appearance and condition of artworks prior to exhibition, reproduction, or sale; is such physical intervention different for other kinds of material objects? Like valued artworks, this stone has an impeccable…

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  Another Anthro Blog

• the sleeper must awaken

  o.w.

  18 Jan 2010 | 9:13 am

  “A person needs new experiences. They jar something deep inside, allowing you to grow. Without them, it sleeps- seldom to awaken. The sleeper must awaken. “ — Frank Herbert Thesis submission – 42 days and counting.

• notes from “The Future of Scholarly Journals Publishing Among Social Science and Humanities Associations”

  o.w.

  24 Sep 2009 | 11:48 am

  Notes from: Waltham, Mary. 2009. “The Future of Scholarly Journals Publishing Among Social Science and Humanities Associations”, Report on a study funded by a Planning Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation http://www.nhalliance.org/bm~doc/hssreport.pdf This is an interesting report that reveals how large scholarly associations popular in the U.S. are adapting to new publishing environments. Unfortunately the article is perhaps too focused on the journals from these associations and it makes some rather bold conclusions based on these findings, that I think would look…

• A changing anthropology? Some notes and quotes.

  o.w.

  24 Sep 2009 | 9:01 am

  Helping to define the “anthropology” and “change” parts of the thesis question, “how is the internet fueling change in anthropology?”: “The intellectual history of the nineteenth century is marked above all by this disciplinarization and professionalization of knowledge, that is to say, by the creation of permanent institutional structures designed both to produce new knowledge and to reproduce the producers of knowledge. The creation of multiple disciplines was premised on the belief that systematic research required skilled concentration on the…

• Mana’o Self Archiving Repository

  o.w.

  26 Aug 2009 | 1:51 am

  After a long summer delay wondering what was up with the Mana’o repository, today I finally got word that yes, it is officially shutting its doors [it has unofficially been down all summer due to the operation being run on a personal home server]. Alex Golub, who spearheaded the project has asked others to pick it up – and I’m quite sure that with all the information cataloged in it that someone will do so. I offered to help host the archive, as prior to studying anthropology I worked as a web developer and system administrator. And being the lazy bastard I am, I would never…

• Why the delay

  o.w.

  25 Aug 2009 | 4:49 pm

  [to explain, since this post is not very self-explanatory, this is a story about how two sections of my thesis have changed drastically over the summer - one section, on self-archiving, part of a larger discussion on open access, discussed the Mana'o Self Archiving Repository for Anthropology, which coincidentally, a day after writing this story, officially announced it is shutting its doors. It is also about my exposure to all sorts of different kinds of anthropology on the OAC. And yes, its been turned into a ridiculous story with absolutely no regard to objectivity or science. Enjoy.] The…

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  Museum Anthropology

• Valene L. Smith Museum of Anthropology

  7 Feb 2010 | 7:21 pm

  Very cool news about the renaming of a museum and a most generous donation:"California State University, Chico’s Valene L. Smith Museum of Anthropology will have a grand opening and dedication Thursday, Jan. 28, that introduces an exciting new exhibition and pays tribute to the contributions of professor emerita Valene L. Smith to the field of anthropology.The museum officially changed its name

• Nigerian Repatriation

  2 Feb 2010 | 8:47 am

  Another interesting example of international repatriation, of objects held in France returned to Nigeria. This return could be the beginning of more, as clearly some are calling for a more systematic and complete approach to repatriation for these kinds of objects: "In the keynote address entitled, Towards a Strategy for Curbing Illicit Trafficking and the Return of Cultural Property, which was

• University of Delaware's Permanent Collection

  2 Feb 2010 | 8:30 am

  At a time when many university museums are struggling, it is exciting to read that the University of Delaware is investing in a new home for its permanent collection. What a great experience for students, and what an opportunity to exhibit new materials!

• Repatriation Coordinator Position

  1 Feb 2010 | 8:40 am

  The University of Massachusetts Amherst seeks a Repatriation Coordinator to oversee compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The position is a three year 12 month lectureship in the Department of Anthropology, starting at $53,762.50. The Repatriation Coordinator directs a small part-time staff and teaches two courses a year that complement the offerings of the

• Director of Interpretation Position

  31 Jan 2010 | 8:44 am

  The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is searching for an outstanding Director of Interpretation to join an extraordinary team in remaking the visitor experience at our nearly century old institution. With the mission "to inspire wonder, discovery and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds," we aspire to enliven and activate the space "where the visitor experience meets our

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  A Hot Cup of Joe

• Shroud of Turin? Probably Not a Death Shroud of Jesus

  cfeagans

  29 Jan 2010 | 9:41 pm

  Image via Wikipedia The death shroud held by the Vatican and occasionally displayed, commonly known as “The Shroud of Turin,” has long since been demonstrated to be a fraud from antiquity. The provenience is unknown; the cloth dates to the 14th century; the pigments in the “image” are ocher and vermillian (i.e. paint); the facial image is unrealistic for a cloth draped around a skull; etc. Another death shroud was discovered recently in the Old City of Jerusalem that dates to the alleged time of Jesus and is, apparently, the first shroud from the period found…

• Mike Adams Pretends to know the Minds of Skeptics

  cfeagans

  24 Jan 2010 | 6:38 pm

  Image via Wikipedia In a recent article on the inter-webs, Mike Adams, self-proclaimed “health ranger” and an editor at NaturalNews.com, pretends to know something about skeptics. Wow. In a word: fail. In his opening paragraphs he says, skeptics” claim to be the sole protectors of intellectual truth. Everyone who disagrees with them is just a quack, they insist. Briefly stated, “skeptics” are in favor of vaccines, mammograms, pharmaceuticals and chemotherapy. They are opponents of nutritional supplements, herbal medicine, chiropractic care, massage therapy,…

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-15

  cfeagans

  15 Jan 2010 | 7:49 am

  wants to read Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe by Erik J. Wielenberg – http://bit.ly/7Xcynu # Powered by Twitter Tools

• Social Security for illegal immigrants?

  cfeagans

  13 Jan 2010 | 7:17 pm

  Image via Wikipedia There is an email going around in that urban legend fashion so popular with non-thinking and irrational conservatives who regularly drink the Rush Limbaugh / Fox News Kool-Aid that claims to be driving a petition to appeal to Obama (”regardless of whether you like him or not”) to veto a bill to give social security benefits to “illegal aliens.” This, of course, is not what is happening or what the bill in question is about. What the email is about is fear-mongering and deception. What the bill is regarding is giving social security benefits to…

• A Decade of Pseudoarchaeology

  cfeagans

  22 Dec 2009 | 10:36 pm

  Here are six pseudoarchaeological topics that I encountered on the internet since the beginning of the millennium. I think most of them I dealt with on this blog, others I probably encountered on various internet forums that I used to hang out on. These days, by the way, I usually stick to just The Science Forum, a generally friendly (for internet standards) forum of science geeks who discuss just about anything from math proofs to biology and evolution. Its a relatively small forum but fairly active. But, I digress… here are some pseudoarchaeological wonders for your enjoyment. Click…

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  Long Road

• “Twilght” mania & Quileute Cultural Property

  Kim Christen

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:49 am

  Check out Angela Riley’s insightful piece in the NYT today on the Twilight industry and Quileute interests: At the same time, like indigenous peoples around the globe, the Quileute want to be meaningful participants in the treatment of their own cultural property. This means, first and foremost, having their sovereignty and their culture respected by outsiders. The Quileute’s Web site tells visitors about the tribal laws that govern Quileute territory. One of these laws specifies that burial grounds and religious ceremonies are “sacred and not to be entered.” Had MSN acknowledged…

• Virtual Lab for Digital Humanities

  Kim Christen

  8 Feb 2010 | 8:53 am

  This looks like a great project at Michigan: The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Preservation and Access Education and Training Program has awarded the School of Information a two-year grant to develop and implement a virtual laboratory featuring digital access and preservation tools. I hope the chronicle their work and the tools they develop. I’d be interested to see how they link in with collecting institutions and other software tools and content management systems.

• 10 best museum websites

  Kim Christen

  7 Feb 2010 | 6:28 pm

  From the Times Online their listing of the “ten best museum websites”: Museums are rarely able to exhibit more than a fraction of the material they own, and even then the best stuff is too often sealed off behind glass or mobbed by school parties. There are no such problems on museum websites, where space is unlimited and objects, scanned in high definition, can be browsed in close-up. Here is the pick of the world’s collections. Check them out, some are obvious choices, others not so much.

• Software Company Helps Revive ‘Sleeping’ Language

  Kim Christen

  2 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

  Check out this story on NPR about the Rosetta Stone company’s endangered languages program: In Harrisonburg, Va., a small training room is alive with the sounds of a once-dead language. Kimberly Walden, Sandra Boutte and Rachel Vilcan are members of the Chitimacha tribe. They have flown from Louisiana to the corporate headquarters of Rosetta Stone, a company that primarily focuses on selling language software to tourists and business travelers. The company is helping them develop computer software they hope will help interest younger members in learning their native tongue. The last…

• CFP:”Visual Interpretations” – Aesthetics, Methods, and Critiques Of Information Visualization in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

  Kim Christen

  30 Jan 2010 | 7:48 am

  Check out the site for this upcoming conference and see the CFPs at MIT’s (new, newish….) The HyperStudio – Laboratory for Digital Humanities. How do visual representations of complex data help humanities scholars ask new questions? How does visual rhetoric shape the way we relate to documents and artifacts? And, can we recompose the field of digital humanities to integrate more dynamic analytical methods into humanities research?

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  Teaching Anthropology

• Need your help. Resignation advice: Got it?

  26 Jan 2010 | 7:32 pm

  So, gentle readers....I need your advice. What do you do in lower higher education to resign from an extra-contractual position when you have come to the conclusion that you are getting hosed?I mean none of the promises that were made to you by your President have come true even when you have worked your butt off and showed all manner of success. Actually, it isn't just a matter of promises not being kept its the realization that you are out there in horrible circumstances with no support and the job you have to fulfill can't really be done because all your hands and feet are tied and failure…

• Unteaching: its what we do

  10 Jan 2010 | 7:50 am

  Its always nice to be reading along and find a reference to anthropology which not only seems to understand us but to promote the best of us.So, here I was sipping the morning coffee with my laptop open to the Sunday papers (look Ma, no ink-stained fingers) and I ran across one of those same-ole/same ole articles. You can read it at the Saturday (okay, I was working my way up to the Sunday one-sheesh) New York Times here, in an article entitled "Multicultural Critical Theory. At B-School?". Condensed version: business schools are "rediscovering" the value of a liberal arts education for…

• Things White People Love: Avatar

  5 Jan 2010 | 9:06 am

  No, I haven't seen it. I probably won't. I always hate it when Hollywood drives the bus--especially for two hours and forty minutes. Besides being an Avatar virgin means I don't become overly invested in my own opinions of it and I am interested in the opinions of my students this coming semester.I noticed a very interesting Russian doll discussion about it at Savage Minds. I guess by Russian doll I mean it became more and more about "us" anthropologists and our analyses and seemed to become smaller and smaller somehow.And then at New Year's my neighbours were enthusiastically discussing our…

• Measuring Success

  21 Dec 2009 | 8:07 am

  Tomorrow is my baby girl's twentieth birthday. In the artificial construct of American age, it is the last year I can refer to her as a baby girl. Next year, she will be an adult.There has been a lively discussion on the SACC listserv about measuring educational success. Of course, I think it is all bullshit. I hate when people try to apply scientific standards to human behavior. It can't be done. Anthropology has taught me that. And then to take it one step further and tell me I need to be able to demonstrate my effectiveness to the public? Please. Get your cultural hegemony out of my…

• Empire Zits: Pow, Zap

  28 Nov 2009 | 11:24 am

  So, I saw this on the Huffington Post and it was just so way cool that I had to share.Seems that empires are like zits. First they grow, then they explode, then, eventually, they just disappear.My favorite part is in 1960 when African independence kicks in. I so knew that was coming. Pow. Zap. Too bad so sad.Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

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  Somatosphere

• Steven Shapin's The Scientific Life

  Todd Meyers

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:18 am

  The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocationby Steven ShapinUniversity of Chicago Press, 468 pp., $29.00 (Hardcover)Reviewed by Talia Dan-Cohen, Princeton University The Preface to Steven Shapin’s The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation, explains Shapin’s overarching commitment to a historical account with a sociological twist. Shapin’s main concern in this book—a concern towards which he gestures in previous works—is with “the way we live now” (xiv). He suggests, before proceeding to the subject at hand, that historical writing…

• University of Wisconsin's "What is Human?" initiative

  Eugene Raikhel

  5 Feb 2010 | 7:06 am

  The number of interesting conferences and lectures in medical anthropology and STS available online is growing steadily.  In addition to not having the time to attend all of these conferences, we soon won't have time to listen to all of them online. The latest one I've come across is a project at the University of Wisconsin--Madison's Humanities Center called "What is Human?"  Like other, similar recent initiatives, this one focuses on exploring the transformations which ideas of the human are undergoing as a result of recent advances in the biological sciences and…

• Web gleanings

  Eugene Raikhel

  1 Feb 2010 | 8:46 am

  Some new gleanings and some older ones which we’ve just discovered: Biology and its publics Chris Kelty. “meanings of participation: Outlaw Biology?” “Outlaws fall outside the system—they are glad to be like Robin Hood, unaccountable but connected, poaching resources and distributing them to people who could never imagine having them. Outlaw biologists love de-mystifying science: ‘did you know you can extract DNA from strawberries using simple household products!? Anyone can do it, you don’t need permission from Science.’ The Outlaw’s motivation is delight, especially…

• More on exporting American madness

  Eugene Raikhel

  24 Jan 2010 | 7:27 pm

  Ethan Watters, whose recent article in the New York Times Magazine was discussed at length here and at Neuroanthropology, has a new piece on the globalization of US mental illness diagnoses.  This one appears in New Scientist and focuses on a couple of themes not addressed by the Times Magazine article: namely, the transformation of psychiatric ideas about depression in Japan and the worldwide dissemination of the PTSD diagnosis.  Watters recounts how GlaxoSmithKline mounted a campaign to transform Japanese professional psychiatric and lay understandings of depression during the…

• CFP: EASA 2010 workshop on "Imagination and the Transformation of Psychiatric Care"

  Guest Contributor

  19 Jan 2010 | 7:58 am

  This call for papers was sent along by Livia Velpry (CERMES3 – Université Paris 8)Call for papers for the workshop “Crisis and Resolution: Imagination and the Transformation of Psychiatric Care” (W106), at the EASA 2010 Conference in Maynooth, Ireland (24-27 Aug 2010).Psychiatry represents an institution at the intersection of social solidarity and exclusion, with the specific configuration of these two elements differing in various historical and cultural contexts. Looking at the history of psychiatric care, one could argue that its evolutions were achieved through various crises (the…

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  Photoethnography.com

• Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia -- now available on DVD or streaming on Amazon!

  28 Jan 2010 | 5:37 pm

  I'm very happy to announce that Amazon.com is now distributing my film, Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan, as a DVD, streaming rental, or streaming purchase! DVD : $24.99 7-day streaming video-on-demand rental : $1.99 Purchase video-on-demand : $9.99 I'm hoping that using Amazon as a distribution source rather than the standard educational film distribution companies will mean that more people will be able to get access to the film at a lower cost.

• Meta: MacBook Pro / Toshiba hard drive fails again

  11 Jan 2010 | 8:13 am

  Sigh. My new 2009 MacBook Pro died this weekend of hard drive failure. Argh! Just in time for the beginning of classes, of course. And again, just like the last time (see 2005/02) it was a Toshiba hard drive that was the culprit. Sudden failure, no SMART warnings, nothing. I should have never gone with the Toshiba, I should have replaced it immediately when I got my unit last Fall. I'm think going to replace it with a Seagate 500 gigabyte 7200 rpm unit. I hate Toshiba. Toshiba hard drive suck.

• Lady Gaga is now Creative Director for Polaroid

  8 Jan 2010 | 3:09 pm

  Reminds me of an exhibit I saw at the Art Institute in Chicago that consisted of what was written on the backs of photographs. The exhibit was in dialogue with the move to digital and the fact that these physical artifacts are harder to come by these days. Lady Gaga to become Polaroid's creative director "I am so proud to announce my new partnership with Polaroid as the creative director and inventor of speciality projects," said the pop star. "The Haus of Gaga has been developing prototypes in the vein of fashion/technology/photography innovation, blending the iconic history of Polaroid and…

• New York Public Library LGBT Visiting Scholars Program

  7 Jan 2010 | 3:08 pm

  FYI: The New York Public Library LGBT Visiting Scholars Program Martin Duberman Visiting Scholars Each year, The New York Public Library provides stipends for up to three Martin Duberman Visiting Scholars. The stipends support travel to New York City and related expenses to do research in the Library’s premier LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) history collections. The travel grants awarded range from $1,000 to $8,500. The program is limited to emerging scholars—those without permanent academic appointments—or those who are unaffiliated with an academic institution.

• Mental Patient Custody Act of 1900 (Japan)

  7 Jan 2010 | 1:26 pm

  I had trouble locating the full text of the 1900 Mental Patient Custody Act in Japan. Here it is below for mostly my purposes. The original was here (http://www.geocities.jp/nakanolib/hou/hm33-38.htm) but like all things on the web, I don't want to count on it still being there. 精神病者監護法(明治33年法律第38号) 第一条　精神病者ハ其ノ後見人配偶者四親等内ノ親族又ハ戸主ニ於テ之ヲ監護スルノ義務ヲ負フ但シ民法第九百八条ニ依リ後見人タルコトヲ得サル者ハ此ノ限ニ在ラス…

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  Ethnography.com

• Learning Foreign Languages

  Tony

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:04 pm

         I was reminded of the importance of foreign language learning twice in the last week or so.  This morning I read a commentary in the New York Times about how poorly Americans do at foreign languages.  Several of the authors remind us that Americans have long done poorly at foreign language learning, and that demands for foreign language learning are declining in the United States, despite attempts by the Chinese government (and others) to get Americans into language classes.       I am also on a Facebook group emphasizing the importance of German language learning in the…

• Foreign Language Learning is a Really Good Thing!

  Tony

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:00 pm

  I was reminded of the importance of foreign language learning twice in the last week or so. This morning I read a commentary in the New York Times about how poorly Americans do at foreign languages. Several of the authors remind us that Americans have long done poorly at foreign language learning, and that demands for foreign language learning are declining in the United States, despite attempts by the Chinese government (and others) to get Americans into language classes. I am also on a Facebook group emphasizing the importance of German language learning in the United States. Last week,…

• The Connection between Crime and Immigration: A Complicated but not Conflicted Issue

  Tony

  8 Feb 2010 | 12:24 pm

       My first book was based on my Ph.D. dissertation, and called Crime and Immigrant Youth (Sage 1999). I of course really like it when people read it, even though it is becoming dated.  In this context, I read the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) new “Backgrounder” called Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Conflicted Issue by Steven Camarota and Jessica Vaughan in November 2009 with interest.  This paper has since received wide exposure in the popular press.  In it the authors claimed to do a comprehensive review of the literature on immigration and crime, and pronounce that…

• Is a single currency for all the world a good idea?

  mark

  6 Feb 2010 | 8:30 pm

  A buddy of mine and I were talking about our favorite conspiracy theories.  Of course, the “one world government” deal is the biggest and bestest of them all. But it led to an economics questions neither of us are skilled enough to answer:  Would a single currency worldwide be good or bad?  Just imagine a worldwide EURO.  How would that work.  OR, does the vary disparity of currency values due to all the different financial systems  act like a shock absorber for the extremes in the global econmy as we have seen in the last 24 months? PLEASE comment if you are…

• Undergrad Seminar: How long should this paper be?

  mark

  24 Jan 2010 | 7:57 am

  Every student wants to know “How long should this paper be?” I think that’s a pretty reasonable question, but for some reason instructors sometimes treat this question like one of the deadly sins. Ironically, when your instructor is asked to present a paper, they are given the answer to that very question at the beginning!  Conferences state how long the abstract should be, how long the sessions are, how many participants and often how long they personally have to speak. Unfortunately, the smart-ass answer some people like to give to this reasonable student question is…

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  Mundane Ethnography

• Pot Roast and Happy Pigs

  6 Feb 2010 | 2:55 pm

  I have things to tell you.I just have not been in the mood to think about food politics lately--and I know that I need to finish telling you about meat. Unfortunately, this discussion gets so political, and I want to figure out a way to discuss the issues without sounding like I am standing on my soapbox screaming into the void.So for now, a brief anecdote and......drum roll please........a recipe {gasp!}. Yes, I previously said that I do not write about recipes, and I do not intend this to be a recipe blog, simply because there are so many recipe blogs out there in the bloggosphere. However,…

• Snack Time?? Americans may be shooting themselves in the foot

  22 Jan 2010 | 11:07 am

  photo from the New York TimesI thought this article in the New York Times was very poignant and interesting.I love snacking just as much as the next person. In fact, I love snacking TOO much. I am prone to eating too many handfuls of pretzels and then feeling a bit bloated come dinner time. I know that I feel my best when I eat three healthy meals a day and don't snack in-between. My food tastes better, and I actually eat less at meals.However, common American nutrition wisdom expounds that snacking is key to staying in control of one's eating. While this may be true for some people (and I…

• Meat Manifesto, Part One: Rational reasons and right

  18 Jan 2010 | 8:17 pm

  If I were a koala bear, I would not think about what to eat; I would nosh on eucalyptus leaves all day. Unfortunately, we simply cannot pick one food to exist upon. We require many different nutrients from a variety of sources in order to survive. Being omnivorous has its benefits and its drawbacks. Unlike koala bears, our existence does not depend upon one particular species also staying in existence. However, being omnivorous means that we must think about what to eat. Genetic coding does not program our brain to eat only one specific food. We learn from our parents, our grandparents and…

• Winter in Chicago--a photo ethnography

  16 Jan 2010 | 8:12 am

  Coming from California, people always ask me how I handle the Chicago winters. My dirty secret is that I love Chicago in the winter. I feel that the true character of Chicago shows its face during the depths of the winter months. Max Weber once likened Chicago to, "a human being with his skin removed." I know that sounds vulgar, but there is something also beautiful about it--about the ugliness and rawness of the image. That is Chicago in the winter--naked, ugly, raw, and yet beautiful and elegant in the way that it carries this ugliness. The city speaks to me in the winter. The clatter,…

• Drink wine. Improve your football performance

  14 Jan 2010 | 6:06 am

  I am still working on the second part of my Meat Manifesto, but in the meantime, I wanted to share this story. Ben is a huge British football fan; he read this story and emailed it me. Personally, I think it is awesome. Roberto Mancini, Manchester City football team’s new Italian coach, is not only changing up his players physical routine, but he is also coaching them at the dinner table. The players’ new diets include Italian classics like pizza and pasta, and every meal will be served with a glass of wine. The coach believes that sipping alcohol at mealtimes (and refraining from…

• 
  Conversations with Dina

• Bytes for Feb 3

  Dina

  3 Feb 2010 | 8:30 am

  Daily updates on what I’m reading Best Connected Individuals Are Not the Most Influential Spreaders in Social Networks – CLIPS: "…. the importance of hubs may have been overstated, say Kitsak and pals. "In contrast to common belief, the most influential spreaders in a social network do not correspond to the best connected people or to the most central people," they say. At first glance this seems somewhat counter intuitive but on reflection it makes perfect sense. Kitsak and co point out that there are various scenarios in which well connected hubs have little…

• Bytes for Jan 29

  Dina

  29 Jan 2010 | 8:30 am

  Daily updates on what I’m reading Calling non-USA based women activists – CLIP: "Today I'm proud to announce the BlogHer 2010 International Activist Scholarship Program. Here's how it works: If you or someone you know is a woman blogger, outside the United States, blogging to raise awareness, consciousness or funding to change their community, region, country or the world, then please nominate yourself or such a blogger to win one of these four scholarships. Scholarship Winners Will Receive: * A full 2-day conference pass to BlogHer '10 * Round trip airfare to and…

• Reliance Netconnect Broadband on Macbook with Snow Leopard

  Dina

  28 Jan 2010 | 5:07 am

  Final hiccups solved!  Ever since I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I’ve been struggling to get my netconnect broadband modem to work as well as it previously did.  I’ve blogged about my initial hiccups, where I thought I’d found a great solution.  Well it worked, but my speeds have been abysmal.  Called Reliance service guys – they couldn’t find a fix – and asked me to locate a driver at the Apple India – and there was none of course. It’s been a few months now – small mercies that this is just my travel mate, and not my main connection. I…

• Bytes for Jan 27

  Dina

  27 Jan 2010 | 8:30 am

  Daily updates on what I’m reading A New Mobile Radar concept from Nokia Research Centre | via @tsuvik – Make sure you check out the video too! CLIP: "Nokia Research Center (NRC) Helsinki today unveiled a new research concept at “Demo House 2010″ research exhibition in Espoo, Finland. The mobile radar demonstration shows how a mobile device can use an active radar sensor to measure speed, its distance and the direction of movement of approaching objects, similiar to the traditional RADAR. It uses electromagnetic waves to provide a different type of mobile wireless…

• Bytes for Jan 25

  Dina

  25 Jan 2010 | 8:30 am

  Daily updates on what I’m reading Mattel takes innovation to the dogs with its Puppy Tweets – CLIP: "Puppy Tweets is a plastic tag with a sound and motion sensor that you attach to your pet's dog collar and connect its USB receiver to your computer. Then you create a Twitter account for your dog and enjoy updates all day from Sparky or whatever its name is on your computer or smartphone. The tag is set with several pre-recorded tweets that are triggered by the dog's activities. So if he's running around, you might get a tweet that says "I finally caught that…

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  Constructing Amusement

• Practising non-violence makes me stabby.

  26 Jan 2010 | 3:10 pm

  We've been on a roll this week...Here's a story from RegHardware, talking about a teen who allegedly attacked his father with regards to a video game. Now, it's not the usual link aka "violent video games cause violence in kids," but rather "parents of violent kid attempt to diffuse violence with video game, failing miserably." The perhaps aptly-named Mario – aged 16 and from Rome – allegedly

• So, gaming does NOT cause rickets.

  25 Jan 2010 | 1:56 pm

  As I ventured in the last blog entry, the story on games causing rickets was just plain "lazy journalism." The quote straight from the scientist who helped to write the report is now on record saying, "We do not say that gaming causes rickets."How many times have we seen this happen? Come on, people. Be responsible--don't be moral panicking game haters. That's just "dodgy journalism."

• Rickets linked to excessive gaming

  22 Jan 2010 | 9:52 am

  While blaming games for all imaginable ills in society is not a new phenomenon, this one is quite the leap: According to this article, researchers in the UK are focusing on the rise of British kids afflicted with rickets, correlated with excessive gaming indoors.But Florence, correlation does not causation imply, you say?What we know, thanks to research, is that lack of sunlight (vitamin D) and

• 2010 CGSA Symposium, May 28th-29th, Montreal

  14 Jan 2010 | 5:57 pm

  Holy Batman, here we are already wrapping up Week 2 of the new semester. Just finished up a barrage of tutorials for CMNS 353.Happy New Year, btw. Too late for that? Well in the spirit of more time (and we all need more of it) the call for abstracts to this year's CGSA Symposium has been extended to a deadline of January 22nd. Wonderful news for those of you who might have gotten news of this

• South Korea's reception of the iPhone

  27 Nov 2009 | 11:32 am

  When I was last there, I had the privilege of chatting with people who wanted the iPhone so badly, and one walked me through the reasons. He actually had an iPhone to use for its various features, even though he had to make calls with his other phone. Talk about deconvergence.South Korea is all abuzz about finally, really and truly getting the iPhone. As Chang at Web 2.0 Asia remarks, "No more

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  Visual Anthropology of Japan

• Scholarship for Visual Anthropology Students

  26 Jan 2010 | 7:26 pm

  Here is a scholarship from the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan for students studying in Japan. Check out the details for the photo entry and the video entry below. Seems like something that a student of visual anthropology should be able to put together either as a new project or from a previous blog entry. Please note the tight deadline of February 15, 2010. Go for it and good luck!2009-2010 SWADESH DEROY SCHOLARSHIPThe Swadesh DeRoy Scholarship is the annual scholarship award by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ). It was created in honor of a respected long-time…

• More Security Cameras

  26 Jan 2010 | 7:17 pm

  From today's Japan Today:16 security cameras installed on Akihabara streetsIn a reaction to the 2008 stabbing rampage in Akihabara, the Kanda-Suehiro-cho neighborhood association installed 16 security cameras on streetlamps in the area Tuesday. These are the first surveillance cameras to go up in the Akihabara area.After the June 8, 2008 incident, community leaders met with local police and Chiyoda Ward representatives to look into installing the cameras. The cameras cost nearly 10 million yen to purchase and install, a hefty price tag that was subsidised by both the prefectural government…

• Yellow Peril? Go Tigers!

  26 Jan 2010 | 2:02 am

  Happy Year of the Tiger. And Go Hanshin Tigers...I happened upon this image when reading the recent article about Jack London's reporting of China and Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. The article, written by Daniel A. Métraux, is called Jack London, Asian Wars and the “Yellow Peril.” Here is a brief description by the author:Novelist Jack London (1876-1916), by far the most popular American writer a century ago, is these days remembered for his novels and short stories on the Yukon. The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and To Build a Fire have retained much of their early popularity,…

• New Film: Shugendô Now

  26 Jan 2010 | 12:49 am

  Image borrowed from Shugendo Now Welcome PageAn announcement from H-Japan brought this film to my attention. Here is a brief description form the film's web page:How does one integrate lessons learned from nature in daily life?This feature documentary is an experiential journey into the mystical practices of Japanese mountain asceticism. In Shugendô (The Way of Acquiring Power), practitioners perform ritual actions from shamanism, “Shintô,” Daoism, and Tantric Buddhism. They seek experiential truth of the teachings during arduous climbs in sacred mountains. Through the peace and beauty…

• Nippon Connection Festival

  25 Jan 2010 | 1:39 am

  Photo borrowed from body. space. time. – Japanese Video Art Exhibition(curated by Masayo KAJIMURA and Saskia Wendland) http://www.nipponconnection.com/nippon-2009/programm-culture-eng.htmlHere's an announcement for a very interesting Japanese film festival in Germany. brief description comes from the event's web page:From 15th to 19th April Nippon Connection once again presents exciting and creative cinema from Japan in Frankfurt. With more than 150 features and short films, the festival showcases a broad scope of current Japanese film production, from avant-garde and anime to blockbusters…

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  ICCI Home

• There is no such thing as sexual intercourse

  8 Feb 2010 | 9:14 am

  I happen to know the secret of academic success. So far I have never divulged it because, well, charity begins at home. But it looks like the field of cognition and culture might be in need of a shot in the arm, so to speak. So I agreed to part with the secret, against a small compensation negotiated with the ICCI. There is some truth in the old adage that it takes an enormous amount of education to be truly credulous. Indeed, years of familiarity with several academic fields have convinced me that the proposition is quite literally true. Being an academic means (at least in some disciplines…

• Altruistic adoption in chimpanzees?

  3 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

  In the last decade, extended altruism towards unrelated group members has been proposed to be a unique characteristic of human societies. Experimental studies on captive chimpanzees have shown, on the other hand, that they are limited in the ways they share or cooperate with others. Individuals are indifferent to the welfare of unrelated group members; they do not care about fairness, and so on (see my previous posts here and here). The behaviour of chimpanzees in the wild is quite selfish, even when some cooperation is involved. For instance, they build coalitions, but that's to climb the…

• Video: A Debate on Group Selection

  2 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

  On July 7th 2009, the The London Evolutionary Research Network held a extremely interesting debate on group selection in which four eminent speakers in the field discussed the motion: "Is natural selection at the group level an important evolutionary force?" Stuart West, Professor of Evolutionary Biology, University of OxfordHerbert Gintis, Professor of Economics, Santa Fe Intitute, University of Siena, and CEUSamir Okasha, Professor of Philosophy of Science, University of BristolMark Pagel, Professor of Biology, University of Reading After many months of waiting, the videos have finally been…

• Experimental epidemiology: The work of Chip Heath

  1 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

  The aim of the post is to bring to the attention of experimentally minded anthropologists the work of Chip Heath and his collaborators. A professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Heath describes his research as examinining "why certain ideas - ranging from urban legends to folk medical cures, from Chicken Soup for the Soul stories to business strategy myths - survive and prosper in the social marketplace of ideas." Heath has a knack for fun psychology experiments that test broader concepts of cultural transmission. In chronological order, here are some examples from his recent…

• The evolution of misbeliefs

  31 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

  An article entitled "The Evolution of  Misbeliefs" by Ryan McKay and Daniel Dennett In Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2009) 32, 493-561, freely available here, with commentaries by (among many others) George Ainslie, Roberto Casati, Pascal Boyer, Max Coltheart, Owen Flanagan, Keith Frankish, Gary Marcus, Ruth Millikan, Ara Norenzayan, Dan Sperber, David Sloan Wilson, and a reply by the authors. Abstract: From an evolutionary standpoint, a default presumption is that true beliefs are adaptive and misbeliefs maladaptive. But if humans are biologically engineered to appraise the world…

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  Dnapes

• Altruism in Forest Chimpanzees: The Case of Adoption

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:31 am

  Figure 3. The adult male Porthos with his adopted female infant Gia.Altruism in Forest Chimpanzees: The Case of AdoptionChristophe Boesch, Camille Bolé, Nadin Eckhardt, Hedwige BoeschPLoSone: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0008901AbstractIn recent years, extended altruism towards unrelated group members has been proposed to be a unique characteristic of human societies. Support for this proposal seemingly came from experimental studies on captive chimpanzees that showed that individuals were limited in the ways they shared or cooperated with others. This…

• Amazing TED talk: Pranav Mistry's SixthSense technology!

  4 Feb 2010 | 6:25 am

  At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop." In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.

• Name a Goualougo chimpanzee!

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:53 pm

  You have the chance to name a chimpanzee featured in this month's National Geographic Magazine. The adult male chimpanzee in print on page 138-139 is quickly becoming famous as his story is read by millions of readers around the world.It was only recently that the unique cultural behaviors of chimpanzees in the Goualougo Triangle were discovered. This adult male was the first to be photographed using a complex tool set.All of the other chimpanzee in the National Geographic article have names, see "Jane" on page 131 and "Dorothy" with her baby "Oz" on page 143.GTAP's Top Fundraiser will have…

• More on cannibalism in bonobos

  1 Feb 2010 | 7:33 am

  Following the publication of filial cannibalism in wild bonobos, the BBC has done the following write up:Bonobo 'cannibalises' own infantBy Matt WalkerA wild bonobo has been seen cannibalising her own recently deceased two and a half-year-old infant.Among apes, such behaviour is extremely rare, only being reported before among orangutans, and never by bonobos, our closest relative alongside chimps. Though uncommon, the behaviour may not be aberrant, says the scientist who witnessed it. But it does further challenge a widely perceived notion that bonobos are an especially "peaceful" ape…

• British scientists deny existence of Gspot - world pities British women...

  29 Jan 2010 | 8:27 am

  from The Guardian.co.ukFrench hit back after British attack on G-spot touches nerve by Lizzy DaviesAfter scientists in London declared the G-spot may be a myth, gynaecologists gather in Paris to launch counterattack There are a handful of subjects - among them cricket, the weather and the art of downing pints through a funnel - on which the French deign to allow the English a degree of authority. Sex, however, is not one of them.Today, just three weeks after scientists at King's College London declared that the elusive G-spot may be a myth, a group of gynaecologists gathered in Paris to…

• 
  Delicious Tag: Anthropology

• Chief Culture Officer now out (an appeal and an outline) :: Grant McCracken

  te_o

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:32 am

• Антропология - главная страница

  lichtung

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:20 am

  Веб-кафедра философской антропологии: тексты, материалы семинаров, дискуссии, научная жизнь, программы курсов

• A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity

  Stu27

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:00 am

• Rosalind Gill

  MaurizioT

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:34 am

• Human Biological Adaptability: Skin Color as an Adaptation

  RoySimon

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:49 am

• 
  Golublog: An Anthropology Blog

• Robin Hood, Season One

  Alex

  3 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

  The “modern sensibility” of this Robin Hood is actually one of the least interesting things about it. Admittedly, thin-hipped Jonas Armstrong looks pretty good in his narrow-legged emo-boy leather trousers, and I’d even go so far as saying that he works the forest green hoodie successfully. But that is about it — the piping on the shoulders of Guy of Gisbourne’s bizarre pleather get-up is closer to the Thriller video than our ‘modern sensibilities’, much less the thirteenth century. Maid Marion’s impromptu tai-chi sessions and poorly-done…

• Robots or Gods

  Alex

  3 Feb 2010 | 11:02 am

  “The social Super-Robot, mighty Leviathan in his behaviorist’s paradise, is a stirring vision, not devoid of a certain icy grandeur. But the Mind remembers, as in a dream, its pristine thrills; and it turns it gaze away from the Robot… The creative urge stirs once more. Intuition leaps. The phantoms claim their own” – Alexander Goldenweiser, Robots or Gods, A.A. Knopf 1931, p. 138

• The Sparticus Pilot

  Alex

  31 Jan 2010 | 11:26 am

  Gratuitous and derivative. In an age of endless, lucrative, and repetitive franchise-based blockbusters, it takes a lot of work to be called ‘derivative’. And in a post-300 world, the bar for gratuitous sex and violence has been set so low that it would take a scanning electron microscope to find the area beneath it that is now labeled ‘too much violence and sex in film’. Its not that I didn’t like Spartacus — I mean it was passable, and things could improve as Lucy Lawless and John Hannah get more airtime — but ultimately it was so obviously…

• Thoughts on the iPad

  Alex

  27 Jan 2010 | 7:48 pm

  1. Yes, but does it play Warcraft? 2. It’s a bit sad that Jobs can no longer power the reality distortion field around his body — once upon a time the best part of Apple agitprop were the Jobs presentations. Now of the two videos on the Apple website, its the slickly produced iPad promo rather than Job’s unveiling that is the main attraction. Sad. 3. How is the iPad making Amazon “nervous about the Kindle”? Amazon’s business is selling DRM’d digital books, Apple’s business is selling consumer electronics to read them on… and this is an…

• 2000-2010

  Alex

  4 Jan 2010 | 12:31 pm

  I spent New Year’s Eve December 31, 1999, in the house of the pastor of the Lutheran Church in Waiwanda waiting for what many believed was the end of the world. On New Year’s Eve December 31, 2009, I spent the evening on the lanai with my wife watching fireworks and smoke — mostly smoke, actually — filling Manoa valley. A decade is a long time, especially if you’re only (only?) old enough to remember three of them. So one thing I spent the past couple of days trying to figure out what exactly I’ve done in the past ten years. My natural inclination has…

• 
  julianhopkins.net

• Social Network Analysis of the Social Media Club - Kuala Lumpur

  29 Jan 2010 | 3:04 am

  SMCKL is a group that meets occasionally to explore matters relevant to social media and industry. The most recent one was about social media monitoring tools, and featured three presentations by comScore, Brandtology and JamiQ. They were interesting, but I was surprised that nobody was talking about social network analysis - so I thought I'd do a little demonstration here. There was much tweeting going on before and after the evening, which was also an occasion for people to meet and network. Using NodeXL, I gathered all the tweets with the hashtag #smckl: in all there were 71 tweeters, and…

• How can 10,000 unique visitors mean an audience of 100?

  22 Jan 2010 | 4:34 am

  A distinct advantage of internet advertising is the ability to accurately measure the audience (through page views), and to know precisely how many people took an interest in the ad by clicking on it. 'Click fraud' (simulating different people by repeated clicking) is detected by automated software, and 'unique visitors' (based on the IP addresses) deals with the problem of the same person refreshing a page in order to simulate a different person. This is how Google has made billions of dollars, so it must be pretty reliable overall. However, how can 10,000 unique visitors equal an audience…

• My favourite podcasts

  14 Jan 2010 | 4:38 am

  I love listening to podcasts - they are a great way to use some of that downtime in an interesting way - when you're driving, walking the dogs, cooking, and so on... I can listen to my favourite programmes whenever I want, pause them, rewind, turn up the volume (great for people like me with hearing problems), etc. If you're wondering how to get podcasts, the first thing to know is that You don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts! (obvious to those of you who know, but not obvious to all). A podcast is just an mp3 file that you can download and listen to on any mp3 player, your phone (if it…

• A historical chronology of English language blogs in Malaysia

  10 Jan 2010 | 6:15 pm

  OK, the title pretty much says it all To get an overall view of the history of blogs in Malaysia, and my fieldwork, I've made a table. Of course, this only represents what I know of, and the events and so that I was able to attend during my fieldwork. There are many many thousands of blogs out there, and I can never hope to cover all of what blogs have been to all bloggers over the years. So - I'd really appreciate any feeback! Anything I've missed out, got wrong... please tell me! It's too long to post as a table (or rather, I don't know how to convert the Word table into html), so I've…

• My 2009

  1 Jan 2010 | 2:26 am

  One useful thing about blogs is that they also serve as a kind of 'digital memory' - like a diary, memories and thoughts are stored for a future time when you can go back and be reminded of what you've been through. How some things you thought were so important at the time have turned out to be insignificant, and others have developed into so much more. Anyway - here's my retrospective of 2009 January Nine posts. As for most of the year, I was reflecting and thinking about blogs - the topic of my PhD. I was ruminating about the importance of comments in The Commentosphere, and Bloggers,…

• 
  Glossographia

• No country for old tongues

  schrisomalis

  7 Feb 2010 | 11:58 am

  Attn: Discovery News BBC News et al. We all know how obsessed you are with the oldest of anything. But please, stop. You are doing a grave disservice to languages by saying things like ‘A tribal language thought to have existed for 65,000 years has disappeared forever’ or ‘Languages in the Andamans are thought to originate from Africa. Some may be 70,000 years old.’ This is utter nonsense, even if you find a scholar to tell you otherwise. All languages are always changing, and although some may change more rapidly than others, the idea that a language could persist…

• Juvenile ethnopaleography

  schrisomalis

  6 Feb 2010 | 8:45 pm

  Ms. 1 (APTC 1) Arthur Chrisomalis, The Lines Construction paper. ff. 2. Unfoliated. 11×8.5 in. Bound at left with four staples. Dated 2010 (?) in hybrid numerical notation (see below). This manuscript is a juvenile work probably composed on 02/06/2010. There is textual and ethnographic evidence to suggest that the scribe (age 4.5) was aided by a more competent master. Currently the MS is magnetically affixed to the archivum refrigeratum in the scribe’s home. fol. 1r: Text in orange ink, 3 lines. (Plate 1) 1v: Vertical lines in pencil, crossed with horizontal and diagonal lines in…

• World Loanword Database

  schrisomalis

  4 Feb 2010 | 7:11 am

  The World Loanword Database project (WOLD), edited by Martin Haspelmath and Uri Tadmor, is now online and freely available to users. It’s a remarkable resource compiled with the purpose of analyzing language contact at the lexical level. Over fifty linguists (including my colleague Martha Ratliff here at Wayne State) have provided mini-vocabularies of languages (41 in total) including information for thousands of words on borrowing, attested age, and analyzability, creating cross-linguistic indices that measure the degree to which particular words (and types of words) tend to be…

• Paleography at KCL

  schrisomalis

  3 Feb 2010 | 8:02 am

  Over the last week there has been a groundswell of action in opposition to the decision to eliminate the paleography program at King’s College London, most significantly the position of the Chair of Paleography, Professor David Ganz, which is the only such position in the UK and perhaps in the English-speaking world. Paleography, the science of manuscripts and handwriting, lacks the direct economic and political impact of other fields but has enormous influence on work throughout the historical disciplines. My new book relied significantly on Professor Ganz’s…

• Medieval anthropology: a working bibliography

  schrisomalis

  31 Jan 2010 | 7:20 pm

  Back in May I discussed the curious absence of anthropological research on the Middle Ages or ‘medieval anthropology’, and made wild and obviously false promises to produce a bibliography of this hemidemisemidiscipline. - I’ve excluded material that is strictly bioarchaeological / forensic / epidemiological in nature; biological anthropologists do all sorts of interesting work on the Middle Ages but it’s a different sort of thing than I’m talking about here. - Similarly, medieval archaeology is an enormous field but generally the archaeology of medieval Europe…

• 
  Media/Anthropology

• Personal media vs. communal media in Jenkins’ Convergence Culture

  John Postill

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:19 am

  I’m reading Henry Jenkin’s Convergence Culture, 2006 version. Impressed with fluency of writing, with examples of how old and new media coexist in the present era, with attempt at distinguishing media from ‘delivery technologies’ (p. 13-14) and with the frank admission that the author doesn’t really understand the current media revolution – a rare public confession to make in the genre of popular new media scholarship, not generally known for the modesty of its authors. Jenkins argues against a technology-driven account of media convergence. Instead he…

• Anthropology of Media book series, Berghahn

  John Postill

  6 Feb 2010 | 3:08 am

  Series Editors: John Postill and Mark Peterson The ubiquity of media across the globe has led to an explosion of interest in the ways people around the world use media as part of their everyday lives. This series addresses the need for works that describe and theorize multiple, emerging, and sometimes interconnected, media practices in the contemporary world. Interdisciplinary and inclusive, this series offers a forum for ethnographic methodologies, descriptions of non-Western media practices, explorations of transnational connectivity, and studies that link culture and practices across…

• Towards an anthropology of security

  John Postill

  3 Feb 2010 | 10:39 am

  ** via cascanews ** Call for papers for a special session at the 2010 Annual Conference of the Canadian Anthropological Society / Société canadienne d’anthropologie (CASCA) May 31 to June 3 2010, Montréal Despite the fact that references to (in)security are becoming a normal feature of contemporary political discourses, anthropologists rarely engage directly with this issue. The field of Security Studies seems to be monopolized by political scientists and military experts. But various voices have recently emerged within the critical and post-structural trends in Security Studies…

• New media and cultural change, 1980-2010

  John Postill

  26 Jan 2010 | 7:04 am

  Still musing and reading in my spare time about new media and cultural change from 1980 to 2010. Of possible interest: * New book out on the barriers to the free flow of media contents across international borders: Cultural Barriers to the Success of Foreign Media Content: Western Media in China, India, and Japan, by Ulrike Rohn. The argument would seem to cohere nicely with media anthropological evidence on the cultural selectivity of foreign media contents. Perhaps what’s really interesting is not so much those rare products such as Avatar or the Olympics that enjoy planetary appeal…

• Political agency and communication

  John Postill

  25 Jan 2010 | 1:46 pm

  Downing, John (1996) Internationalizing Media Theory. London: Sage. Gledhill, John (2000) Power and its Disguises. London: Pluto. p. x. According to Downing, questions of state, of totalitarian systems, of political activism, etc, have often been studied without reference to communication, ‘as though politics consisted of mute pieces on a chessboard’. On reading this passage I was reminded of Gledhill’s point about Bourdieu’s theory of the political field. Gledhill argues that Bourdieu’s use of his notion of habitus in the study of politics is problematic because…

• 
  Google Blog Search: Anthropology

• Anthropology in Practice: Pictures of Our Present

  Krystal D'Costa

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:00 am

  Anthropology in Practice. The study of human life can happen anywhere. You don't need to travel to remote villages—there are opportunities for anthropological observation available all around us, all the time. ...

• A Deep Dive Into Agile » High-Tech Anthropology®

  Rich

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  There's probably a far more important reason though, to observe users in their native environment as our High-Tech Anthropologists® do. This is because most of the information we need to collect is non-verbal. ...

• Forensic Anthropology in South Africa

  unknown

  9 Feb 2010 | 2:29 am

  I have a BA degree with a double major in archaeology and anthropology and I want to be a forensic anthropologist. Where can I go to study this in South.

• What is the Curriculum for the Anthropology of Policing ...

  jeffmartin00

  9 Feb 2010 | 1:28 am

  To begin, I would like to start thinking about the different ways in which the anthropology of policing fits into the contemporary markets for higher education. I wonder if we can identity a set of core concerns that effectively ...

• Mera Chandigarh - Society for Indian Medical Anthropology Honors ...

  unknown

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:03 pm

  Society for Indian Medical Anthropology Honors Dr DN Kakar.

• 
  UC Santa Cruz Anthropology Blog

• Legendary "man-eating" lions of Tsavo likely ate about 35 people--not 135, say scientists

  The notorious "man-eating lions of Tsavo" that terrorized a railroad camp in Kenya in 1898 likely consumed about 35 people--far fewer than popular estimates....

• Archaeology course unlocks "silent history" of the slave trade in West Africa

  Anthropologist J. Cameron Monroe led UCSC's first undergraduate archaeological expedition to Benin this past summer....

• Popular Science taps UCSC anthropologist Nathaniel Dominy for "Brilliant 10" issue

  Popular Science names Nathaniel J. Dominy one of this year's "Brilliant 10" young scientists and researchers....

• UCSC anthropologist Adrienne Zihlman honored for pioneering research on human evolution

  Adrienne Zihlman is honored for pioneering research on human evolution....

• 30 Grads in 30 Days: Sara Stickler

  B.A., Anthropology...

• 
  American Journal of Physical Anthropology

• An interspecific analysis of relative jaw-joint height in primates

  Brooke A. Armfield, Christopher J. Vinyard

  1 Feb 2010 | 6:55 am

  Jaw-joint height (JJH) above the occlusal plane is thought to be influenced by cranial base angle (CBA) and facial angulation during growth. To better understand how JJH relates to midline craniofacial form, we test the hypothesis that relative increases in JJH are correlated with increasing CBA flexion and facial kyphosis (i.e., ventral bending) across primates. We compared JJH above the occlusal plane to CBA and the angle of facial kyphosis (AFK) across adults from 82 species. JJH scales with positive allometry relative to a skull geometric mean in anthropoids and most likely…

• Book review: The Human Lineage

  David S. Strait

  1 Feb 2010 | 6:55 am

  No abstract.

• Book review: Reticulate Evolution and Humans: Origins and Ecology

  Trenton W. Holliday

  1 Feb 2010 | 6:55 am

  No abstract.

• Mitochondrial DNA patterns in the Iberian Northern plateau: Population dynamics and substructure of the Zamora province

  Luis Alvarez, Cristina Santos, Amanda Ramos, Roser Pratdesaba, Paolo Francalacci, María Pilar Aluja

  1 Feb 2010 | 6:55 am

  Several studies have shown the importance of recent events in the configuration of the genetic landscape of a specific territory. In this context, due to the phenomena of repopulation and demographic fluctuations that took place in recent centuries, the Iberian Northern plateau is a very interesting case study. The main aim of this work is to check if recent population movements together with existing boundaries (geographical and administrative) have influenced the current genetic composition of the area. To accomplish this general purpose, mitochondrial DNA variations of 214 individuals from…

• Books received

  1 Feb 2010 | 6:55 am

  No abstract.

• 
  Neuroanthropology

• SlowTV: Mind and Its Potential

  dlende

  7 Feb 2010 | 4:38 am

  The Mind and Its Potential Conference was hosted in Sydney, Australia back in November. Mind & Its Potential is your opportunity to hear the world’s top scientists, psychologists and philosophers explain how to apply the new science of the brain in education, medicine, business and your life. After we previewed it, Paul wrote up a nice review of the conference. Now SlowTV is featuring the videos of several of the talks. Michael Valenzuela, Neuroplasticity and the ‘Use it or Lose it’ Brain “Dr Michael Valenzuela describes the concept of neuroplasticity in the brain. He cites…

• Complete this quote: “The convergence of neurology and cross-cultural research provides…”

  Paul Mason

  5 Feb 2010 | 9:59 pm

  How would you complete this unfinished quote? “The convergence of neurology and cross-cultural research provides…” At the beginning of this year, I posted a “Complete this quote” about religiosity and another about hypnotisability. At the time, I was reminded about my prior reading of Michael James Winkelman’s work about shamanism. For Winkelman, whose work is closely aligned with authors like Merlin Donald, Steven Mithen and Charles Laughlin,  “Shamanism is a part of an evolved psychology, with significant implications for human cognitive evolution…Shamanism clearly…

• Wednesday Round Up #101

  dlende

  3 Feb 2010 | 6:49 am

  Back to the old categories approach, with thanks to my student Casey Dolezal for help. So top of the list, then anthropology and writing for a broader public, mind, a nature/culture mix of anthropology, health, and finally some good stuff on addiction at the end. Top of the List Sharon Begley, The Depressing News about Anti-Depressants Prozac Nation needs to face the data – anti-depressants don’t work as well as we thought, especially for more mild cases of depression (no better than placebos in the meta-analysis) Michael Greenwell, Howard Zinn – 1922 to 2010 The “radical historian”…

• Access Denied

  dlende

  2 Feb 2010 | 3:49 am

  Access Denied is a great new anthropology blog on immigration and health. In particular, the editorial team focuses on the “vital global health challenge: unauthorized migrants’ and immigrants’ lack of access to health care services.” As they write about their initiative: Do unauthorized im/migrants have a right to health? To medical care? To publicly funded care? In this blog, medical anthropologists host a lively conversation among scholars, activists, policymakers and others on the complex and contentious issue of unauthorized migration and health. We approach the issue…

• Finissez cette citation : « Comment s’effectue cette mise en mémoire culturelle ? La rèponse… »

  Paul Mason

  30 Jan 2010 | 11:35 pm

  Finissez cette citation : « Comment s’effectue cette mise en mémoire culturelle ? La rèponse… » How would you complete the following unfinished quote? “How does this cultural memory work ? The answer…” La phrase incomplète d’aujourd’hui vient de la page 372 du livre L’Homme Neuronal écrit par Professeur Jean-Pierre Changeux et publié en 1983 par Fayard. Son chapitre, Épigenèse, et le section sur l’empreinte culturelle est un important contribution a la connaissance de l’homme parmi la neuroanthropologie. Déjà en 1983, Changeux a compris : « Le paradoxe…