Anthropology

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  Google News: Anthropology

• Parking lot will replace Anthro House - The Hullabaloo Online

  20 Nov 2009 | 11:48 am

  Parking lot will replace Anthro HouseThe Hullabaloo OnlineAfter ruling out a replacement building for financial reasons, Tulane decided to replace the Anthropology Building with a parking lot.

• Giving new lives to outcast mothers - Student Life

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:05 am

  Giving new lives to outcast mothersStudent LifeIn the spring, he will be teaching the undergraduate courses Anthropology of Human Birth and Anthropology of Maternal Death. In the past, he has taught

• Nocturnal Butterflies - San Francisco Chronicle

  20 Nov 2009 | 12:26 am

  Nocturnal ButterfliesSan Francisco Chronicle Gallery for the duration of the performance. "Genre-defying dance… Avy K dances physics, chemistry, technology, anthropology, architecture, and poetry.”

• Dell Hymes, 82 Linguistics, anthropology scholar - Washington Post

  19 Nov 2009 | 11:58 pm

  Washington PostDell Hymes, 82 Linguistics, anthropology scholarWashington PostDell Hymes, an influential scholar of linguistics and anthropology who helped pioneer the study of how people use language in their everyday

• Community News - Staunton News Leader

  19 Nov 2009 | 11:47 pm

  Community NewsStaunton News LeaderAnthropology professor to discuss election violence in Kenya: Jennifer Coffman, professor of anthropology at James Madison University, will present and more »

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  Topix: Anthropology

• Latin America is a continent where Communism lingers on

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:40 pm

  This month was marked by grandiose celebration of the fall of Soviet-designed Communism.

• MANILA: Thrills

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:24 pm

  I recently wrote about ziplining , one of those crazy moments in life where you jump into the unknown then wonder what you have gotten yourself into.

• A Klingon Christmas Carol

  20 Nov 2009 | 12:22 pm

  An after-Thanksgiving treat for the whole family... Scrooge has no honor, nor any courage.

• Chair floats to final frontier

  20 Nov 2009 | 11:45 am

  Quantum fluctuations in space, science, exploration and other cosmic fields... served up regularly by MSNBC.com science editor Alan Boyle since 2002.

• Predawn fire destroys Siam Society buildings

  20 Nov 2009 | 11:19 am

  A predawn fire yesterday wiped out the Siam Society's office and shop. Parts of the society's valuable library were also destroyed.

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  Yahoo! News: Anthropology

• CAMPUS QUESTION (Tulane Hullabaloo)

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:06 pm

  How does the current economic climate affect your post-graduation plans? How do you feel about demolishing Anthropology building for parking lot? Loading ...

• Cosmic Log: Chair floats to final frontier (MSNBC)

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:03 pm

  Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: Space ballooning hits new heights in an HDTV commercial showing an armchair floating against the backdrop of our curving planet, almost 100,000 feet up.

• Parking lot will replace Anthro House (Tulane Hullabaloo)

  20 Nov 2009 | 11:51 am

  After ruling out a replacement building for financial reasons, Tulane decided to replace the Anthropology Building with a parking lot. Though the Federal Emergency Agency offered to pay to repair the Anthropology Building, the amount of damage to the building warranted an entirely new building in its place, said Rick Jones, senior associate vice president of [...]

• Dr. Guo Speaks To Signal Mountain Lions About Exercise For Disabled (The Chattanoogan)

  20 Nov 2009 | 9:33 am

  Exercise is beneficial to everyone for both physical and psychological reasons, but this may be difficult to achieve for those who are disabled, according to Dr. Zubin Guo, professor of anthropology at UTC, in an address at a recent meeting of the Signal Mountain Lions Club.

• Put up a parking lot? — The Opinions of the Hullabaloo: (Tulane Hullabaloo)

  20 Nov 2009 | 8:52 am

  hullthinks: Students should be allowed in the new parking lot The decrepit Anthropology Building is turning into a parking lot. We could hate on the environmental significance, but we like parking too. So, The Hullabaloo is a bit curious. Who will be able to park there? Will it only be for the faculty and staff? Only library staff? A [...]

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  Anthropology.net

• Four Stone Hearth #80 @ Middle Savagery

  Tim Jones

  19 Nov 2009 | 9:39 am

  Although I somehow completely missed this latest Four Stone Hearth in that I didn’t even remember it was happening this week, the 80th edition is nevertheless now online at Middle Savagery, so be sure to check it out. The first few entries look at tool use, Ardipithecus ramidus and of course, Neanderthals, without whom no occasion such as this would be complete, and there’s also a slew of posts delving into matters archaeological. Elsewhere are other items that between them consider such issues as swine flu and digital authority – I’m a little pushed for time and…

• Into the Uncanny Valley – Seed Magazine

  Tim Jones

  19 Nov 2009 | 12:23 am

  This via Mind Hacks – Seed Magazine have published a piece by Joe Kloc, in which he looks at the relationship between humans and life-like robots, with regard to the so-called ‘uncanny valley’ effect, described here at Wikipedia: (Masahiro) Mori’s hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion…

• The Astronomical Orientation of Ancient Greek Temples – by Alun Salt, PLoS ONE

  Tim Jones

  18 Nov 2009 | 11:06 pm

  Alun Salt will doubtless be known to many readers here, not least for his interest in archaeo-astronomy, research which looks into the ways in which ancient peoples regarded the sky from the perspective of its solar, lunar and planetary components. I just got word that he has published the linked paper, for which this is the abstract: Despite its appearing to be a simple question to answer, there has been no consensus as to whether or not the alignments of ancient Greek temples reflect astronomical intentions. Here I present the results of a survey of archaic and classical Greek temples in…

• The FOXP2 Molecular Network Begins Taking Shape – Babel’s Dawn

  Tim Jones

  16 Nov 2009 | 8:39 am

  Here’s a link to a brief article by Edmund Blair Bolles regarding the current research into FOXP2, from which this is the introduction: A letter to the current issue of Nature has caused a stir among those interested in the evolution of language. It looks at the FOXP2 gene in more detail than any paper has ever done before. It also inspires at least as many questions as it answers, but now at least we have better questions. Also it has dealt yet another blow to the theory that language depends on distinct cognitive modules that permit internal thought and that later interface with motor…

• Michael Gazzaniga: Split brains and other heady tales – ‘All in the Mind’

  Tim Jones

  16 Nov 2009 | 8:08 am

  I’m still mostly offline, hence the brevity of posting in recent weeks, but nevertheless I still have time today to point readers in the direction of this week’s podcast from ‘All in the Mind’, from ABC Radio National, in which cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga’s chat on left-brain/right brain research is reprised. I’d recommend this to everyone with an interest in not only how the conscious mind arises from the brain, how the two different brains operate and govern our actions and perceptions of the world around us, but in the increasingly…

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  Savage Minds

• Vale Dell Hymes

  Rex

  17 Nov 2009 | 10:44 am

  As Kerim noted, Dell Hymes passed away. My connection to Hymes is tangential—mostly the odd personal connections that come with the small world of academics—and others will be able to memorialize him better than I. The passing of Hymes and Lévi-Strauss so closely together is sad but also offers a time for us to reflect on these academics, their legacies, and their different personal style. Lévi-Strauss loved culture and, at times, seemed almost traumatized that he was forced to study people in order to get at it. Hymes’s writings are equally scrupulous, but deeply honor…

• Dell Hymes (1927-2009)

  Kerim

  16 Nov 2009 | 3:20 pm

  I woke up this morning to receive the following notice in my inbox: Last Friday our distinguished colleague Dell Hymes passed away peacefully in his sleep. It hasn’t yet been reported in the newspapers, but Jason Baird Jackson has a post speaking to Hymes’ contribution in the fields of anthropology and folklore: Dell Hymes was a amazingly influential folklorist, anthropologist, and linguist who revolutionized the study of language in (/and) culture in general, and of Native American narrative traditions in particular. He made important contributions to the history of anthropology,…

• Is it unethical to say something about someone that they cannot understand?

  Rex

  10 Nov 2009 | 10:40 am

  Do anthropologists have a moral obligation to make their work accessible to the people they are writing about? The answer, to me, is an obvious ‘yes’. Although as someone who has blogged for almost a decade I seem to think that the public waits with baited breath for a description of my breakfast so I am maybe not the best person to ask. Still, I think most people can agree that anthropologists have a moral obligation to share their research with the community where they worked as well as the public. But how much of our scholarly output should be this sort of work? Some people…

• Additional coverage of Lévi-Strauss

  Rex

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:53 pm

  Just a quick update of some highlights of recent coverage on the passing of Lévi-Strauss: In addition to the New York Times, there are fine obituaries in The Telegraph, and The Guardian—I’ll get to the French papers later if I have a chance. There is a fine gaggle of links at The Atlantic. The AAA blog has run a couple of pieces about Lévi-Strauss, including one by Richard Price. There is also an older posting from Marshall Sahlins, which is, obviously, a much better summary of Lévi-Strauss’s thought and relevance than mine. And written by someone who should know, so…

• Remembering Claude Lévi-Strauss

  Rex

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:38 pm

  The Internet is now full of the news that Lévi-Strauss has passed away, including an obituary at the New York Times and a collection of links at the AAA blog. Our blog—whose name is inspired by Lévi-Strauss—has discussed him in the past including some thoughts about his legacy on his 100th birthday. Many people have already shared their memories of him but what are we who never met him supposed to remember of his legacy? Perhaps it is time to be overly schematic and pare down the paeans to something more manageable for those who may be reading the news but find much of the…

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  ScienceDaily: Anthropology

• 'Hobbits' are a new human species, according to statistical analysis of fossils

  19 Nov 2009 | 11:00 am

  Researchers have confirmed that Homo floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease. Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans.

• Slowing evolution to stop drug resistance

  17 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Infectious organisms that become resistant to antibiotics are a serious threat to human society. They are also a natural part of evolution. In a new project, researchers in Sweden are attempting to find substances that can slow the pace of evolution, in order to ensure that the drugs of today remain effective into the future.

• Ancient weapons dug up by archaeologists in England

  17 Nov 2009 | 2:00 am

  A Mesolithic site may date from as early as 9000 BC, by which time hunter-gatherers had reoccupied an area near Asfordby, England, after the last ice age. These hunters crossed the land bridge from the continental mainland -- 'Britain' was only to become an island several thousand years later.

• Words, Gestures Are Translated By Same Brain Regions

  10 Nov 2009 | 11:00 am

  Researchers have shown that the brain regions that have long been recognized as a center in which spoken or written words are decoded are also important in interpreting wordless gestures. The findings suggest that these brain regions may play a much broader role in the interpretation of symbols than researchers have thought and, for this reason, could be the evolutionary starting point from which language originated.

• Greening Of The Sahara Desert Triggered Early Human Migrations Out Of Africa

  8 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  Scientists have determined that a major change in the climate of the Sahara and Sahel region of North Africa facilitated early human migrations from the African continent. Among the key findings are that the Sahara desert and the Sahel were considerably wetter around 9,000, 50,000 and 120,000 years ago then at present, allowing for the growth of trees instead of grasses.

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  NYT: Anthropology

• A Case in Antiquities for ‘Finders Keepers’

  16 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  Do laws about the ownership of ancient artifacts help or hurt archaeology?

• The Anguish of War for Today’s Soldiers, Explored by Sophocles

  11 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  A project uses ancient theater as a vehicle for sharing pain, learning and healing.

• The Savage Detective

  7 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  Claude Lévi-Strauss, the last great French philosopher, reshaped the simple art of gathering information about so-called primitives.

• Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Two-Part Harmonies

  7 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  In trying to understand the work of the French anthropologist, look for pairs of opposites common to all human societies.

• Claude Lévi-Strauss, 100, Dies; Altered Western Views of the ‘Primitive’

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  Mr. Lévi-Strauss, a towering intellectual, transformed the West’s understanding of what was once called “primitive man.”

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  Dienekes Anthropology Blog

• Y chromosome diversity, human expansion, drift, and cultural evolution (Chiaroni et al. 2009)

  dienekesp

  19 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

  The supplementary material has some very interesting maps of the distribution of all major Y-chromosome haplogroups, and lists the geographical centroids with the standard deviations of all haplogroups. For example, the centroid of haplogroup J is in the Mediterranean sea between Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey, while that of its sister haplogroup I is in Central Europe. However, the standard deviation (in degrees) of the two haplogroups is 27.45 and 13.58 respectively, which shows the limited geographical extent of the latter haplogroup (see map on left).As I have mentioned before, the origin (in…

• Genetic methods applied to linguistic diversity of the Sahul

  dienekesp

  18 Nov 2009 | 10:14 am

  It is great to see cross-pollination between the sciences; in this case, use of STRUCTURE has led to insights about languages of the Sahul. From the paper:Although we cannot specify how many different migrations have colonized Sahul since the first settlement approximately 50,000 years ago, our results indicate ancient splits into seven major plausible groups: TNG, South-Papuan, North-West Papuan, North-East Papuan, West-Papuan, PN, and non-PN. The wide-spread families (TNG and PN) on both sides of the Torres Strait divide (~9,000 BP) are the result of more recent expansions of two of those…

• Y chromosomes of NE Portuguese Jews

  dienekesp

  18 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

  American Journal of Physical Anthropology doi:10.1002/ajpa.21154Phylogeographic analysis of paternal lineages in NE Portuguese Jewish communitiesInês Nogueiro et al.AbstractThe establishment of Jewish communities in the territory of contemporary Portugal is archaeologically documented since the 3rd century CE, but their settlement in Trás-os-Montes (NE Portugal) has not been proved before the 12th century. The Decree of Expulsion followed by the establishment of the Inquisition, both around the beginning of the 16th century, accounted for a significant exodus, as well as the establishment…

• Time-independent evolutionary mtDNA mutation rates in Penguins

  dienekesp

  15 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

  The study is reminiscent of another recent paper on Penguins, and strikes another blow against the idea that over long time periods genetic diversity accumulates at a slow rate.Trends in Genetics, Volume 25, Issue 11, doi:10.1016/j.tig.2009.09.005High mitogenomic evolutionary rates and time dependencySankar Subramanian et al.Using entire modern and ancient mitochondrial genomes of Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) that are up to 44000 years old, we show that the rates of evolution of the mitochondrial genome are two to six times greater than those estimated from phylogenetic comparisons.

• Cambyses' army found in Egypt

  dienekesp

  13 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

  VANISHED PERSIAN ARMY SAID FOUND IN DESERTBones, jewelry and weapons found in Egyptian desert may be the remains of Cambyses' army that vanished 2,500 years ago.The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology's biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian…

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  Open Anthropology

• 0.18: Anthropology and the Rise of the Social Sciences within the Structures of Knowledge – Immanuel Wallerstein

  Maximilian Forte

  11 Nov 2009 | 5:08 pm

  Professional Knowledge Creation in the World-System Building an anti-imperialist “anthropology,” plus an anthropology that studies imperialism, and that studies itself as a received invention of imperialism, means much more than just analyzing and questioning how anthropologists served this or that colonial venture. It means totally unthinking anthropology as a social science; more than that, it means totally unthinking social science. For whatever discussions of “decolonizing anthropology” have achieved, this ground was never covered in those discussions. In the previous posts the…

• 0.185: Terms of Incorporation, Concepts of Domination

  Maximilian Forte

  8 Nov 2009 | 6:17 pm

  Phrases such as “decolonizing anthropology”* and “anthropology and the colonial encounter” have become salient in anthropology especially since they are the titles of two of the better known, most widely quoted books on the subject. What subject? That is what is lacking clarity, because presumably the phrases above are meant to mean something, and if so, then one has to wonder: why not “anthropology and imperialism” or “de-imperializing anthropology”? What choices are we making when we choose the term colonialism, rather than imperialism? Throughout the course of this blog,…

• Reality Check for the Human Terrain System: Marilyn Dudley-Flores Responds

  Maximilian Forte

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:46 pm

  Introduction On 26 February 2009, a report by John Stanton was published on this blog (Some Breaking News on the Human Terrain System: Death Threats Against Female Colleagues). At the time it caused some uproar, was discussed on several other blogs, and perhaps no other story on this blog received so many comments as that one (200 comments to be exact). The story was followed up with this one: US Army 101st Airborne Investigative Report on Human Terrain System. In the midst of the furious commentary, many allegations were made about the person at the center of the story, Dr. Marilyn…

• Claude Lévi-Strauss: à la prochaine fois

  Maximilian Forte

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:58 pm

  Almost one year ago we celebrated the remarkable 100th birthday of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Today we learn that his body has died. In the meantime, we continue to work with what he has left us, as can be seen in the latest posts on this blog concerning his vision of a future anthropology, as seen back from the 1960s. One of the statements he produced at the time continues to be one of the leading mottos behind this project. I look forward to continue grappling with his work. No goodbyes, Claude Lévi-Strauss, rather à la prochaine fois. Claude Lévi-Strauss obituary French anthropologist whose…

• Anthropology on Stage, Human Terrain System on Screen

  Maximilian Forte

  30 Oct 2009 | 2:45 pm

  [A momentary "distraction" from my "zero series," and a big thanks to John Stanton for the first set of news below.] Tonight, Friday, 30 October, a free play reading in North Hollywood will start at 8:30pm — the title of the production: ANTHROPOLOGY: Or How To Win Friends and Influence Afghans (see the circular). The play was written by Rick Mitchell, an associate professor in English at California State University, Northridge. The featured story line is, “A satirical examination of the US policy of making the War on Terror more culturally sensitive, ANTHROPOLOGY: Or How To Win…

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  antropologi.info

• Looking back at 10 years Public Anthropology online

  Lorenz

  17 Nov 2009 | 7:37 am

  What is public anthropology? Already in 1999, when he had started his Ph.D project, Martijn de Koning has made his first anthropology website. In a very interesting blog post with many links, he is looking back at 10 years public anthropology online: In 1999, when I just had started my Ph.D project in Gouda, I had a fantastic idea. An idea so fantastic that in the next 10 years I would dedicate a huge amount of time to sustaining and developing it. Too much time perhaps because sometimes it destroyed my time to sleep. The idea was that I would launch a website about and for my research and…

• Where shamans understand colonialism as sickness

  Lorenz

  15 Nov 2009 | 5:28 pm

  “I am here to save the people, to cure the people. In the city they are all sick, they are all domesticated. The shaman has to go together with disease.” Anthropologist Anders Burman talks to Don Carlos, an Aymara shaman in Bolivia. According to Don Carlos, people are ill from Colonialism and in need of a cure. “In contemporary Bolivia, the concept Colonialism is used so frequently, and with such distinct connotations by such a diverse set of actors that it demands scrutiny", the Swedish anthropologist writes in his paper Colonialism in Context An Aymara Reassessment of…

• Anthropologists ignore Open Access Week - a report from Wellington

  Lorenz

  4 Nov 2009 | 7:10 pm

  What’s the point of science if it’s not publicly accessible? Two weeks ago, the first global Open Access Week was organized. Masters’ student in anthropology Karstein Noremark has written a report for antropologi.info about the Open Access Week at Victoria University of Wellington. In his opinion, especially anthropologists should be interested in making research available online. But he did not see any anthropologists at the Open Access Week seminars. There was a general lack of interest among academics. Many of the attendants were library staff. He hopes more students will…

• Claude Levi-Strauss is dead (updated)

  Lorenz

  3 Nov 2009 | 10:10 am

  A month before his 101st birthday, Claude Levi-Strauss, one of the most influential anthropologists, died at the age of 100. He died over the weekend, according to the office of the president of the School for the Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, in Paris, Bloomberg reports. See also my collection of articles on Levi-Strauss’ 100th birthday UPDATE - Obituaries: / Lots of posts about his death - here a selection Greg Downey: Thinking through Claude Lévi-Strauss (Neuroanthropology.net) Richard Price: My Teacher, Claude Lévi-Strauss (AAA Blog) Kevin Karpiak: Claude…

• Two months free access to AAA journals!

  Lorenz

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:58 am

  From now on until the end of December, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) is offering free access to a large number of its journals. Why not free all the time? asks Kerim Friedman. Good question. The AAA has often been criticized for its restrictive publishing policies. But maybe things are changing. Here is a selection of journals with free access in november and december 2009. I’ve picked a sample article from the most recent issue as well. Very interesting stuff and many catchy titles! For the full list of journals, visit the AAA Blog American Anthropologist Matthew Lauer…

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  Material World

• PUBLIC EVENT: Curatorial Conversation

  Haidy L Geismar

  16 Nov 2009 | 1:58 pm

  "Inventory: Text and Context" with Bernard L. Herman (Art History, University of Delaware) Thursday, November 19, 2009 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm Bard Graduate Center, 38 West 86th Street, New York (RSVP required) For info What can an inventory tell us? How can we use an artifact of the legal system to tease out relationships between people and their relationship to things? How does such a document translate into an exhibition? Bernard Herman, a leading scholar of American material culture, will draw on his vast knowledge of both things and people in a conversation with cultural historian Catherine…

• How Does it Matter?

  Graeme Were

  16 Nov 2009 | 5:24 am

  Reviewed by Ian Wedde Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life: Ethnographic Approaches. 2009, edited by Phillip Vannini, New York: Peter Lang Publishers. 256pp. ISBN 978-1-4331-0301-8. One way to write a review of this book is to treat it as a material object suitable for ethnographic study within the social field of Material Culture and Technology Studies in Everyday Life – where, for our convenience, ‘everyday life’ here encompasses the daily practices, social constructions, actor networks, epistemologies, semiotics and narratives of those whose profession is the academic…

• Deconstructing Cinema

  Haidy L Geismar

  13 Nov 2009 | 2:46 pm

  Interesting article in the NY TImes about the work of Ken Jacobs, experimental film-maker whose work focuses on the materiality of film and its after effects and distortions. The Nervous Magic Lantern is a variation on a proto-cinematic machine, dating from the Renaissance or earlier, called the magic lantern, a device for projecting images. By the mid-17th century, it was popular enough that the diarist Samuel Pepys bought one “to make strange things on a wall.” Mr. Jacobs, a leading figure in American avant-garde cinema, has been making strange things shudder and writhe on screens for…

• Quelle distinction?

  Patrick Laviolette

  9 Nov 2009 | 10:24 pm

  A recent article in the Guardian by Associated Press writer Elaine Ganley comments on plans for a McCafé to be added to the Carrousel du Louvre food court of the world's most visited museum. What would Bourdieu have made of this?

• Research Fellowship in Museum Anthropology

  Haidy L Geismar

  9 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pm

  The Bard Graduate Center and the American Museum of Natural History announce a Research Fellowship in Museum Anthropology. The fellowship provides support to a postdoctoral investigator to carry out a specific project over a two-year period. The program is designed to advance the training of the participant by having her/him pursue a project in association with a curator in the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). The Fellow will also be expected to teach one graduate-level course per year at the Bard Graduate Center (BGC). The Fellow will thus be in…

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  Open Access Anthropology

• Social Sciences Open Access Repository

  kerim

  31 Oct 2009 | 12:44 am

  Via John Postill’s Media/Anthropology  blog, a post about a new Open Access Repository for all the social sciences. “SSOAR [Social Science Open Access Repository] is geared towards a scholarly audience in the social sciences wishing to search quality-controlled content across disciplinary boundaries and to access documents directly and free of charge.” This is the first general Social Science OA repository we’ve found (hence our previous post on  EduPunk alternatives). I hope SSOAR succeeds, and that the other institutions (cough, cough, AAA, cough, cough) follow…

• Editorial on Commerical and Not-for-Profit Scholarly Publishing

  jbj

  15 Oct 2009 | 5:56 pm

  Readers of the Open Access Anthropology blog might have an interest in an opinion essay that I (Jason Baird Jackson) wrote recently. In it, I lay out some modest steps  that scholars interested in changing the direction of scholarly communications might take. The focus is a plea to withdraw from working with commercial publishers. The essay can be found on my website here: http://wp.me/p6MUY-5r . Thanks!

• Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity

  jbj

  14 Sep 2009 | 7:24 pm

  Readers of Open Access Anthropology will want to check out the announcements for (and press coverage of) the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity that was just announced by Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT and Berkeley. I just finished speaking to Inside Higher Education about it for a story that they will run tomorrow.  I had not yet read the “OA Compact” statement yet, which added to my nerves about weighing in on it (via a phone interview). I may or may not need to explain myself after the story runs.  Having now read the core documents, I can just state at this stage…

• The Impact of the Web 2.0 World on Scholarly Societies

  jbj

  14 Aug 2009 | 7:41 pm

  A friend who is very involved in the leadership of the American Folklore Society  just shared with me a link to James Lappin’s very effective blog post “The Impact of the Web 2.0 World on the Records Management Society.”  While presented as a case study of information science/archives organizations in the UK, its arguments generalize amazingly well and provide valuable food for thought for all scholarly disciplines and societies–including those that the readers of this weblog care (or have given up caring) about. Vis-a-vis the American Anthropological Association,…

• UCP(-AAA)+JSTOR=?

  jbj

  13 Aug 2009 | 7:10 pm

  I think that this is the week’s big news in scholarly communications issues.  Its not open access, but it is not-for-profit. There is much that could be said.  Hopefully there will be some discussion among anthropologists, especially in light of the AAA’s experiences working with the University of California Press Journals program.  For myself, I will observe again that the Journal’s staff at California were amazing to work with as an editor.  Personal experience aside, it seems that the big question here relates to the meaning of this to ProjectMuse.  Read all about it…

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  Mathilda's Anthropology Blog

• Biological influences on criminal behavior

  mathilda37

  1 Nov 2009 | 12:55 pm

  Really a set of study links for me to reference. It seems that persistent criminal behaviour is in fact highly hereditary at about 0.8. So, something to ask about if you are adopting a baby would therefore be ‘what are the parents like? In particular ‘what is the mother like?’ As criminality seems to be even more inherited from the mother’s side. Biological influences on criminal behavior Criminal behaviour: a psychological approach to explanation and prevention By Clive R. Hollin Psychopathology and violent crime Genetic influences in criminal convictions: evidence…

• Lewontin’s fallacy

  mathilda37

  1 Nov 2009 | 9:45 am

  No, I’m not dead, just recovering from an MS attack that ‘turned off’ my curiosity and messed up my memory for a couple of months. I will look at the comments (all 254 of them) eventually. I was slightly irked at watching channels 4’s shockingly bad and biased series on race, in which it trotted out Lewontin’s fallacy on the programs and on its supporting material on its site. All the criticisms I posted (they had an OOA date of 50k ago, don’t get me started…) have not been allowed through to the site, so I’m going to have a mini rant here.

• Tunisian and Moroccan Y Chromosomes

  mathilda37

  11 Aug 2009 | 2:44 am

  Y-chromosome markers distribution in Northern Africa: High-resolution SNP and STR analysis in Tunisia and Morocco populations Valerio Onofria, Federica Alessandrinia, Chiara Turchia, Mauro Pesaresia and Adriano Tagliabracci, a, Abstract At the beginning of 2006 more than 301,000 immigrants resident in Italy resulted to come from Tunisia and Morocco, 66% of which are male subjects; in addition, it is estimated that some other thousand are clandestine. Our data show that there is an increasing involvement of Tunisian and Moroccan individuals in paternity testing and in individual identification…

• Guanche Y chromosomes

  mathilda37

  10 Aug 2009 | 11:59 am

  Demographic history of Canary Islands male gene-pool: replacement of native lineages by European Abstract  The origin and prevalence of the prehispanic settlers of the Canary Islands has attracted great multidisciplinary interest. However, direct ancient DNA genetic studies on indigenous and historical 17th-18th century remains, using mitochondrial DNA as a female marker, have only recently been possible. In the present work, the analysis of Ychromosome polymorphisms in the same samples, has shed light on the way the European colonization affected male and female Canary Island indigenous…

• I’m ill again…

  mathilda37

  10 Aug 2009 | 7:35 am

  Swine flu this time- along with the rest of family. Excuse me not not clearing comments. I’ll get around to it sooner or later.

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  Museum Anthropology

• Repatriation News

  18 Nov 2009 | 7:58 am

  Lots in the news this last week relating to myriad repatriation issues:Massacred Yaqui Remains ReturnedHuman remains at the American Museum of Natural History from a gruesome 1902 massacre site are repatriated.Jim Thorpe's Final Resting PlaceA discussion about whether to return Thorpe's earthly remains from PA to his natal OK.Maori Bones Return HomeThe bones of twelve maori people which have lain

• New Hearst Museum Director

  13 Nov 2009 | 10:22 am

  A news release: Anthropologist Mari Lyn Salvador, a scholar of Panama's native Kuna people and the textiles that they create and an experienced museum professional, has been named director of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Salvador is scheduled to take the new post in late November.

• Special Repatriation Issue

  11 Nov 2009 | 4:02 pm

  CALL FOR PAPERS: A special issue of Museum AnthropologyLooking Back, Looking Forward: NAGPRA after Two DecadesIn 1990, the United States Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), thereby forever altering museum collections and exhibits, and the relationship between museums and Native American communities. In this special thematic issue of Museum

• Field School Assistant Position

  9 Nov 2009 | 3:28 pm

  OSEA Job Announcement: Program Assistant for 2010 Summer Field School OSEA Seeks 1 or 2 Program Assistants for 2010 Summer Field School. The number of assistants hired will depend upon final program enrollment and qualifications/experiences of applicants. We seek a highly motivated, mature, professional, with developed qualifications and/or experience in both office/clerical management and

• American Anthropologist & Practicing Anthropology

  7 Nov 2009 | 6:52 am

  A message from T. J. Ferguson (Anthropological Research, LLC.):In November and December 2009, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and Wiley-Blackwell are offering free access to over ten years of Anthrosource content, AAA’s online portal for anthropological research.I encourage the practicing community to take advantage of this opportunity to explore the benefits of Anthrosource as a

• 
  A Hot Cup of Joe

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-13

  cfeagans

  13 Nov 2009 | 6:49 am

  I need an article if anyone has it: Wolpoff's "The Case for Sinking Homo Erectus." # Found the article I needed! Just after I posted my plea and emailed a couple friends, I clicked on last google link & it was his CV! # Lot's of interesting articles in PDF on Wolpoff's CV page for the paleoanthropologist http://bit.ly/3twcWb # Powered by Twitter Tools

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-10-09

  cfeagans

  9 Oct 2009 | 8:49 am

  Congratulations to Afarensis! http://bit.ly/19AmIp # Letterman to apologize on-air again tonight: http://bit.ly/IdOKa I couldn't help but comment on this one. # Scientist of the Year Notable: Elizabeth Blackburn – http://shar.es/1Yr4n # Powered by Twitter Tools

• The 77th Edition of the Four Stone Hearth

  cfeagans

  7 Oct 2009 | 4:30 pm

  Be sure to check out the 77th edition of the Four Stone Hearth, a blog carnival for anthropology bloggers. Some of the very best in anthropology blogging can be found there every other Wednesday. Somehow I keep forgetting to send in my own entries, so if you’re ever hosting the FSH, feel free to knick whatever you like from A Hot Cup of Joe. Today, the Four Stone Hearth #77 is hosted at A Place Odyssey. Go. Read. Enjoy.

• The Effect of Ardipithecus ramidus on Agnopithecus creationus

  cfeagans

  6 Oct 2009 | 11:57 am

  Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr There were a stream of posts on the anthropology blogs about Ardipithecus ramidus, the 4.4 million year old fossil hominid originally discovered by a team led by Tim White in Ethiopia between 1992-1993. I really wanted to get in on it but barely had time to read some of the reports and none to offer up a post until now. So what can I say that others in the blogosphere haven’t already pointed out? Probably not much, but I thought I’d highlight some of the reactions by creationists (Agnopithecus creationus» ). Chris Esparza, a…

• FTC Cracking Down on “Complementary Alternative Medicine” Blogs?

  cfeagans

  5 Oct 2009 | 9:07 pm

  If so, this is good news for consumers. Frauds like Kevin Trudeau have been peddling their snake oil to anyone willing to shell out the bucks, often under the ironic guise of being “consumer watchdogs,” protecting consumers from “the establishment” and “big pharma.” Trudeau is the obvious con artist extraordinaire among the CAM crowd, but there are many more, often operating websites that are put together that resemble personal blogs but are designed to be money-making machines where click-thrus earn advertising revenue or, more to the point, the blogger…

• 
  Long Road

• CFP: IMAGING IDENTITY

  Kim Christen

  11 Nov 2009 | 9:50 am

  IMAGING IDENTITY: MEDIA, MEMORY AND VISIONS OF HUMANITY IN THE DIGITAL PRESENT A symposium hosted by the National Portrait Gallery and the Research School of Humanities, Australian National University. To be held at the  National Portrait Gallery, Canberra 15-17 July 2010. Keynote speakers WJT Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History, University of Chicago David Elliott, Independent curator and Artistic Director of the 2010 Sydney Biennale David Marr Journalist, author and commentator CALL FOR PAPERS Understandings of self and other occur…

• CFP: Museum Anthropology

  Kim Christen

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:40 pm

  I’m on the board for the Council for Museum Anthropology, here is a call for a special issue of Museum Anthropology: Looking Back, Looking Forward: NAGPRA after Two Decades In 1990, the United States Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), thereby forever altering museum collections and exhibits, and the relationship between museums and Native American communities. In this special thematic issue of Museum Anthropology, we are seeking innovative studies of NAGPRA’s impacts, brief reflections and commentaries, and analyses that…

• CFP: AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples

  Kim Christen

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

  AlterNative has a general call for papers to be published in 2010. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples is a multidisciplinary peer-review journal. It aims to present Indigenous worldviews from native Indigenous perspectives. It is dedicated to the analysis and dissemination of native Indigenous knowledge that uniquely belongs to cultural, traditional, tribal and aboriginal peoples as well as first nations, from around the world.

• CFP: Museums and Restitution

  Kim Christen

  3 Nov 2009 | 8:21 pm

  Museums and Restitution is a two-day international conference organised by the Centre for Museology and The Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester. The conference examines the issue of restitution in relation to the changing role and authority of the museum, focussing on new ways in which these institutions are addressing the subject. Restitution is one of the most emotive and complex issues facing the museum world in the twenty first century. Its current high profile reflects changing global power relations and the increasingly vocal criticisms of the historical concentration of…

• On Openness: thoughts at the end of Open Access Week

  Kim Christen

  22 Oct 2009 | 8:46 pm

  Since it’s open access week I wanted to try and get down some thoughts I’ve had about this troubled term. My own open access-ness–I’m an Assistant Editor for the Museum Anthropology Review, an online, open access journal; I archive all my publications on my blog which is licensed with a creative commons license, I’ve attached SPARC author addendums to many–but not all–of my journal publications, I tried to negotiate full access to my book through my publisher but succeeded in only getting the first chapter available free online. I’ve published…

• 
  Teaching Anthropology

• Tell me about your mother: how Jewish is she?

  9 Nov 2009 | 8:21 pm

  Interesting article at the NY Times about the legal battle brewing in the U.K. over determinations of "Jewishness" in school admission processes: "Who is a Jew?" is the central question. And the courts have tripped over the thorny issue of the inherent discrimination in the us/them reality of some religious faiths. When does religious faith become ethnic identification? For orthodox Jews ( at least those in decision-making positions at some schools): not when your mother has converted and not when she has converted Progressively. Ethnic discrimination foul, according to the British…

• The Linguists: For Free

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:39 pm

  Well this Honors gig thing is really kicking my ass but I still feel more anthropologist than low-level abused administrator so I am back at my blog. I miss it.I still feel a bit choked up about Levi-Strauss dying. Seems so stark to type that. I suppose we should celebrate the life and all that: 100 years of distinguished living but still its death and one can only spin that so far.Anyway, I was in Washington D.C. this past week at the National Collegiate Honors Council meetings. It was useful for my new responsibilities but the best part (Ha! I am still full-time anthropologist) was the…

• The Meaning of Black Hair: Chris Rock, IMF Restructuring and Curly Kits

  11 Oct 2009 | 8:51 am

  I notice Chris Rock (such a bummer that the You Tube of him on Leno from a previous post was pulled--trust me it was hilarious)is releasing a documentary entitled "Good Hair" exploring the meanings and issues associated with...well..."black hair". I didn't have to go very far to read lots of stories and reviews of it. Salon has three stories, specifically, on the documentary and ancillary links that pull up stories on Michelle Obama's hair and Tyra Banks' weaves. I haven't done a full Google on it but I was playing a little a game with myself betting that if it hasn't happened already, Stuff…

• Making Anthropology "relevant": Do we really want to go there?

  9 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am

  In my Real Life, I have been given a book proposal for a new intro to Cultural Anthropology to review. Its kind of bugging me as I make my way through the proposal because the unknown author seems to feels some compelling need to make Anthropology more "relevant" to students today. I suppose someone somewhere has some deep insight into what is relevant to students today but.....no, sorry. Don't think so. We all run around pretending to know our students and giving them that monolithic designation as if they are all the same. Maybe in some land of artificial, homogeneous people that would…

• Ooooo....teachable moment alert...teachable moment alert

  8 Oct 2009 | 6:37 pm

  Have we all seen the recent discussion of Michelle Obama's ancestry? The New York Times has extended discussion/blog/commentary up with views of noted scholars commenting. Even one by an Anthropologist (yeah team). Its got some nice bits on race. I need to go read the others. I, totally, paused to rush back and tell you. Follow me back over there--here.

• 
  Somatosphere

• Peter Benson on “Safe Cigarettes” and FDA regulation of tobacco products

  Eugene Raikhel

  19 Nov 2009 | 9:57 am

  In an upcoming issue of Dialectical Anthropology – already available online – Peter Benson has a very interesting article in which he examines the issues surrounding a bill passed earlier this year, which placed tobacco products under the regulatory aegis of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  I was able to read this paper earlier as a discussant for a panel at this year’s SMA conference on “Science, Addiction and Capitalism” for which Peter presented it, and I think it raises a number of issues which are important for those of us interested in addiction and also for…

• Epistemological frameworks and the 'feminization' of the HIV/AIDS pandemic

  Eugene Raikhel

  12 Nov 2009 | 11:43 am

  The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) recently set up a new blog site called "The Fourth Wave: Violence, Gender, Culture & HIV in the 21st Century." The site is a counterpart to a forthcoming book edited by Jennifer F. Klot and Vinh-Kim Nguyen, and it makes the chapters of that book publicly-available free-of-charge. In addition to pdf and Flash versions of the complete papers, the site allows visitors to leave blog-style comments on the abstract pages. The volume seems particularly significant and interesting for several reasons: 1) it was commissioned by UNESCO; 2) the contributors…

• Videos of plenary presentations from the SMA conference

  Eugene Raikhel

  11 Nov 2009 | 9:11 am

  The videos of the plenary presentations from the Society for Medical Anthropology's September conference are now available online.  As we've mentioned before, this was a very impressive line-up of speakers.  Videos of most of the talks, as well as Marcia Inhorn's introductions of the speakers, are available at the conference website.  Here's the list: A conference introduction by Marcia Inhorn Keynote address by Paul Farmer (an autobiographical talk about his mentors and influences) Didier Fassin on Global Public Health Arthur Kleinman on Mental Health Lynn Morgan on Medical…

• The Berlin Wall as metaphor and diagnosis

  Eugene Raikhel

  9 Nov 2009 | 7:22 am

  Twenty years ago today the Berlin Wall fell (both materially and metaphorically) and state socialism in Eastern Europe entered its final period of collapse.  However, as the ample anthropological literature on the area shows us (and as Slavoj Zizek discusses in an op-ed piece in today's New York Times) two decades of postsocialism have had far from unequivocal results. A more thorough discussion of the anthropological literature on postsocialism--as it relates to issues of medicine, health and science will have to wait, but at the moment I'd like to highlight a couple of interesting…

• In the journals

  Keahnan W

  8 Nov 2009 | 9:46 am

  Below are some recent issues that might be of interest: In the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, Andrea Pieroni and Maria Elena Giusti conducted a medical ethnobotanical study of the Occitan communities in Italy, titled "Alpine ethnobotany in Italy: traditional knowledge of gastronomic and medicinal plants among the Occitans of the upper Varaita valley, Piedmont". Istav Praet examines shamanic-curing-as-metamorphosis in Northern Ecuador in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute in an article titled "Shamanism and ritual in South America: an inquiry into Amerindian…

• 
  Photoethnography.com

• Teleprompter software for the Mac

  18 Nov 2009 | 9:07 am

  I was exploring teleprompting software for the Mac. This page seemed the most useful: http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/12/856385

• Jobs: Tenure-track assistant professor in New Media Studies

  29 Oct 2009 | 1:09 pm

  So maybe there are jobs in visual anthro after all? Assistant Professor New Media Studies Tenure-track assistant professor in New Media Studies. The Syracuse University English Department is continuing to expand its focus in Film and Visual Culture. Ph. D. must be in hand at time of appointment. Send detailed letter, CV, and names of three references to Professor Erin Mackie, Chair, English Department, 401 Hall of Languages, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-1170. Applications should be postmarked by 16 November 2009. Syracuse University is an EO/AA employer. An offer will be made…

• NYT Editorial on Justice for the Mentally Disabled

  27 Oct 2009 | 8:18 pm

  NYT has a good editorial on how the new Obama administration is taking action on disability issues: Justice for the Mentally Disabled After eight years of the Bush administration using the power of the Justice Department to undermine civil rights laws, it is good to see the department applying one of those laws, the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. It has started a timely new initiative aimed at full enforcement of that law, which forbids unjustified isolation of the mentally disabled and requires that they be integrated into the wider community where appropriate. Read full article

• Careers: Programs in Visual Anthropology

  27 Oct 2009 | 7:37 pm

  Prospective graduate students have been writing me for advice about doctoral and masters programs in visual anthropology. Since my previous entry on this topic is outdated, I've decided to update it to the best of my current knowledge. M.A. Programs USA: San Francisco State University, MA in Visual Anthropology USA: University of Southern California - Masters in Visual Anthropology Ph.D. Granting Institutions with Visual Anthropology Programs/Faculty USA: Harvard University - Sensory Ethnograph Lab and Secondary PhD in Film and Visual Studies USA: New York University - Profs. Faye Ginsburg,…

• iPhoneography

  24 Sep 2009 | 10:17 pm

  My buddy Nate sent me the following link: http://www.iphoneography.com/ You've probably seen this, but just in case! Jarvis has a neat set of iphone photo apps and filters for the iPhone that mimic polaroids, 1974 gelatin, etc. Hadn't seen it. Quite cool. I want an iphone app that manufactures SX70 film (the real stuff, not virtual), though.

• 
  Ethblography

• Unlocking Digital Cities

  3 Nov 2009 | 1:25 pm

  The November issue of Wired Magazine (UK) features "Unlocking the Digital City", a series of articles exploring how new technologies have transformed - and are continually reinventing - urban life and urban landscapes. The entire issue is worth reading. Below are excerpts from three perspectives on the promises and realities of the digital age in urban environments. (This blog post has been cross-posted on the OAC. Discuss it here). 'Sense-able' urban designScholars back in 1995 speculated about the impact of the ongoing digital revolution on the viability of cities. Only 14 years ago, the…

• Anthropology Blogs

  13 Aug 2009 | 6:30 am

  I came across this list of the top 25 anthropology blogs as compiled by Invesp Consulting (an e-commerce conversion optimization company, of course). Their Blog-Rank statistics are based solely on (automated) data extraction from various aspects of online content, such as RSS membership, Yahoo and Google indexed pages and pagerank, visitor and pagehit counts, link-to-page ratios, Alexa and Technorati ranking and social sites popularity (Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Redditt, Propeller and mixx). It's an interesting way to see how the the marketing world's ranking tools apply to mostly…

• VoiceThread for collaborative learning and teaching

  9 Aug 2009 | 4:56 am

  I read this review article today on Educ@conTIC (Spanish only) about a web-based service for creating collaborative, multimedia conversations. VoiceThread is "a powerful new way to talk about and share your images, documents, and videos".With VoiceThread, group conversations are collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world. All with no software to install.A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or…

• Spain still below average, natives still digital

  5 Aug 2009 | 6:31 am

  The latest from a European Commission report on Internet use throughout Europe has found that Spain should seek to improve and expand upon the use of new technologies in homes and businesses. Less than half of Spaniards make use of the Internet regularly, and those who use it daily represent little more than a third of the population. Therefore, Spain falls at the tail end of Europe, ranking 20th out of 27. Only Romanians, Bulgarians, Greeks and Cypriots make use of the internet less on a daily basis.According to the document, DSL (high-speed internet) coverage in Spain has increased since…

• So long and thanks for all the bratwurst

  30 Jun 2009 | 10:47 am

  Auf Wiedersehen, Bavaria.I'm moving on now to the next stage of my journey and the completion of my PhD thesis. This blog and my other accounts (OAC, Twitter) will go dark over the next week or so as I relocate.More soon.

• 
  Ethnography.com

• Ok, this is just for amusement, and pretty good at that.

  mark

  26 Oct 2009 | 9:30 pm

  Most people reading this blog will be unaware of my past as a European style clown, street performer, juggler, musician and well… all the odd eclectic things you learn on the road over about a decade of wandering. Without those years I would not have the thought process I have today, one that I like than you kindly. I still love it when I see something new, that I have not seen before. Thanks to another old friend on facebook, I bring you Peruvian mime, Hugo Suarez. I don’t know the Title

• The ethnography of a stroke

  mark

  25 Oct 2009 | 10:07 pm

  I first heard of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor during an interview on Fresh Air, it is a great conversation (Listen to the interview, not just the text, it is more in depth than the TED talk you see here). Thanks to my friend Mariflora for bringing the TED link to my attention. How often do we get the emic on such a matter? Well worth watching and forming your own ideas from. Her very interesting TED talk:

• The growing work of anthropologists with the military parallels the evolution of design anthropology – 15 years later…

  mark

  31 Aug 2009 | 3:19 pm

  Lord knows I would welcome much stronger examination of the credentials of people that claim to be social scientists / anthropologists that are working in the military. There is the potential for the development of an excellent sub-discipline of anthropologists doing direct applied work for various forms of the federal government and the military (which for all I know already exists, I am new to this arena). I have no doubt there have been anthropologists working in all levels of Government/Military/Intel worlds for many years, but they may have not been/are called anthropologists in most…

• Ordinary People Project – Roger from Yukon Territory

  mark

  21 Aug 2009 | 7:29 am

  I met Roger, a master carver, while staying at Nugget City, Yukon. Enjoy!

• Go Barney Go!

  mark

  19 Aug 2009 | 10:52 pm

  I am a registered independent, I always have been. I have voted all over the political map because I don’t think I should have to vote for a party but the person. With the health care debates its hard NOT to see the republican party as the greed supporting evil empire. There have been death threats of people attending meetings, republican operations to disrupt meetings. Look, my late father.. a die hard conservative republican family practice doctor… spend some time as the medical director of an HMO. The result? He resigned the position within 6 months and was a staunch supporter…

• 
  Constructing Amusement

• Call for Papers, Iowa Journal of Communication

  12 Nov 2009 | 11:54 am

  Feel free to distribute widely:Call for papers: Iowa Journal of CommunicationSpecial issue: Games and Culture: Asia-Pacific perspectives As a cultural genre, online gaming has been one of the most dynamic in the world. Within a relatively short period of time, online gaming has become a major entertainment tool for fun, but it has also become another channel for human relationships as part of

• China rejects rhetoric on internet addiction

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:10 am

  This is an interesting development coming out of China:China's health ministry has turned down the country's rhetoric on internet addiction, and has warned against "boot camp" style approaches for habitual web abusers. The ministry has issued guidelines for "inappropriate use of internet" saying there was no precise definition of internet addiction, state news agency Xinhua reports.There are at

• EPIC Podcasts available

  29 Sep 2009 | 3:06 pm

  From the American Anthropological Association's blog: The Brand Show recently posted three podcasts featuring anthropologists involved in the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference. Give them a listen: The Past, Present and Future of Ethnography in Business (feat. Martha Cotton)The Rise of Ethnographic Insight in Enterprise (feat. Ken Anderson)A New Perspective on Consumer Research May Give

• New book out: Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific

  23 Sep 2009 | 8:28 pm

  Just got my copy of a new book from Routledge, "Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacific" edited by Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan. Dal Yong Jin and I wrote the first chapter in Part I titled, "The Politics of Online Gaming," where we explored the geo-political, economic, cultural and social dimensions of Korea's creative industries in the form of online gaming.You will also find contributions

• Genome BC Launches New Online Newsletter for Social Scientists and Humanists

  21 Sep 2009 | 7:16 pm

  Some often mused that while hyper-specialization leads to some very interesting discoveries, the divorcing of ethics, morality, or culture from the study of 'real science' is ultimately not for the greater good. William Leiss' work comes to mind. All the more reason it's nice to see initiatives like this come to fruition. New from Genome BC:This is a resource for social science and humanities

• 
  Visual Anthropology of Japan

• "Personal information law hindering right to know"

  13 Nov 2009 | 9:34 pm

  A recent article from the Yomiuri On-Line discusses the so-called personal information law and several of its problems. As I discussed in earlier posts dealing with the ethics of photographing in public in Japan, the law seems to have been over-interpreted by many to the point of making them paranoid about providing even the most basic information. This is not an easy or healthy environment for anthropological fieldwork. Full text article appears below:The Personal Information Protection Law was meant to do exactly what its name suggests--protect people's personal information--but it has also…

• "Photographer Shinoyama's office, home raided over nude photo shoot"

  10 Nov 2009 | 2:40 pm

  From Japan Today, 11/11/09:Police investigators searched the office and home in Tokyo of photographer Kishin Shinoyama on Tuesday on suspicion of public indecency over the shooting of nude photos for his book of photos "20XX TOKYO." The investigators also raided the office in Tokyo of a talent agency to which one of the two models, a 21-year-old actress, belongs. Shinoyama, 68, allegedly took outdoor shots of the nude models in Tokyo from mid- to late August 2008 in situations where anyone could see them, police said. The Metropolitan Police Department plans to question Shinoyama later,…

• Fall 2009 Globalization Kobe Fieldtrip

  10 Nov 2009 | 2:09 am

  A couple of weeks ago the Globalization class and some guests went on a fieldtrip to Kobe in search of... globalization. We hit the usual spots of Kitano, Nankin-machi and the Harbor area.Good times were had by all. Click here to read more about the fieldtrip from a visual anthropology student.After the trip proper all went their separate ways for further exploration. While many students went to MOSAIC in search of Kobe beef and Halloween parades, I cruised around looking to capture some night scenes.For pictures of previous Globalization class fieldtrips, click here.

• New Horizons of Academic Visual-Media Practices: 13th Kyoto University International Symposium

  9 Nov 2009 | 1:02 am

  New Horizons of Academic Visual-Media Practices: 13th Kyoto University International SymposiumDecember 11[Fri] 10:00-18:30, 12[Sat] 10:00-18:30, 13[Sun] 10:00-18:00, 2009Kyoto University Clock Tower Centennial HallWith visual media and discussions from such diverse fields as medical science and astrophysics, to biology, Anthropology, sociology, psychology and Informatics, we present a revolutionary interdisciplinary endeavor unique in the world! Pioneering new fields of academia through the visual practices, Kyoto University opens the door to a century of academic films with this…

• 耳がきゅっとなる ("Ears Are Dazzled, Touched by Sound")

  7 Nov 2009 | 11:08 pm

  Filmmaker and Sound & Vision Specialist Amanda Belantara has been kind enough to contact me and inform me about her latest project, 耳がきゅっとなる ("Ears Are Dazzled, Touched by Sound"). She describes the project in her web page as follows:A collective exploration of the sounds that surround us, this film features sounds and images inspired by sound diaries kept by local people in Yamaguchi, Japan. An intriguing portrait of the invisible, the film’s unconventional style attempts to reveal the magical quality of sounds that lies hidden in the everyday. See more at her web page,…

• 
  ICCI Home

• Human expansion, drift, and cultural evolution

  19 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

  A new paper in PNAS, "Y chromosome diversity, human expansion, drift, and cultural evolution," by Jacques Chiaroni, Peter A. Underhill and Luca L. Cavalli-Sforza (Published online Nov. 17, 2009, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0910803106). Abstract The relative importance of the roles of adaptation and chance in determining genetic diversity and evolution has received attention in the last 50 years, but our understanding is still incomplete. All statements about the relative effects of evolutionary factors, especially drift, need confirmation by strong demographic observations, some of which are easier to…

• Is the spell broken? Reflections on evolutionary debunking and religious beliefs

  17 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

  At the Notre Dame conference Darwin in the 21st century, Paul Griffiths gave an interesting talk on evolutionary debunking arguments for religion. Evolutionary debunking arguments basically say that religious beliefs are unjustified because they are a byproduct of evolved cognitive predispositions. Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon summarizes this position very aptly: If religion is natural, i.e. if religious beliefs can be explained as a byproduct of everyday cognitive capacities, we need not invoke supernatural entities to explain these beliefs. Guy…

• Grounding the Social Sciences in the Cognitive Sciences?

  16 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

  The workshop on "Cognitive Social Sciences-Grounding the Social Sciences in the Cognitive Sciences?" (here) is to be held at CogSci 2010 in Portland, Oregon, on August 11, 2010. This workshop is aimed at exploring the cognitive (psychological) basis of the social sciences and the possibilities of grounding the social sciences in cognition (psychology).

• “I read Playboy for the articles”

  15 Nov 2009 | 8:59 am

  Zoe Chance and Michael Norton have a delightful book chapter on the very creative ways in which people justify their questionable decisions. They report an experiment in which male participants were given a choice between subscriptions to two sport magazines. One covered more sports while the other had more featured articles. More interestingly, it was also mentioned that one of the magazines had a swimsuit edition (cf. figure : it should be noted that I only browsed through covers of swimsuit editions in order to find an illustration for this post). Want to take a guess at which magazine the…

• FOXP2 again in the news

  12 Nov 2009 | 1:51 am

  The gene FOXP2 has been in the news ever since it was revealed in 1998 that the members of an extended London family who had a serious language impairment also had an abnormal version of that gene. In a letter in today's (November 12) edition of Nature, a team led by Daniel Geschwind of UCLA reports that they inserted the chimp and the human versions of the gene into human brain cells and looked at expression of the genes that the protein regulates. They found that the human version increased the expression of 61 genes and decreased the expression of 51 genes compared with the chimp version…

• 
  Remote Central

• Posthumous Dues - Mac Tonnies, Author and Blogger, Dead at 34

  27 Oct 2009 | 7:46 am

  UFOMystic: Remembering Mac It was something of a shock to hear the very sad news that author and blogger Mac Tonnies passed away in his sleep last week, aged only 34. We briefly corresponded several years ago, and he was about the first person in the public eye to say they liked what was then a nascent remote central - at the time I recall that being a huge filip, especially because I regarded

• From Memory/Take No More/Hospital Records Podcast

  6 Oct 2009 | 2:50 pm

  Whilst the world waits with bated breath for the release date of 'Take No More' from Utah Jazz, featured on the 96th edition of the only dnb podcast you'll ever need to hear, here's a quick look at Mistabishi's much vaunted Matrix Remix of 'From Memory', also featured as the last track on Podcast 98. ...and although 'Take No More' fades in and out of London Elektricity's show hosting, (30m

• Stimulus Respond - 'Icon' Edition - Call for Contributions

  29 Aug 2009 | 11:45 am

  Following on from the previous 'Numbers' edition, Open publication - Free publishing - More stimulus Stimulus Respond are now seeking content for the next issue, called 'Icon', as we see from this advisory: We are currently soliciting contributions for the next edition of the next issue of Stimulus Respond, called Icon. Contributions might be literally or abstractly related to Icon, and

• Jupiter Impact Points Us To Mars

  27 Jul 2009 | 12:41 pm

  ESA Science & Technology: Hubble views new dark spot on JupiterOver the past few days, spectacular images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope have shown the scene of a vast impact - roughly twice the length of Europe - which has scarred the surface of Jupiter, making this the second time in 15 years that such an event has taken place there. Spotted by Anthony Wesley, a '44-year-old computer

• A Blog is Born: NickG Productions: To whom it may concern..

  15 Jul 2009 | 10:07 am

  NickG Productions: To whom it may concern..A quick heads-up to a new blog written by NickG, who is technically, or at least biologically part of the remote central stable of writers, so this is to wish him all good luck in what I hope will be a long and very successful blogging career.Although I suggested he start his own blog, everything will be written by him with no creative or editorial input

• 
  Dnapes

• Launch of Gola Forest Website

  20 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  The Gola Forest Reserve has a great new website, full of beautiful images, news on the cross boundary park and information on the ongoing research and activities in the area. Please check it out!

• Dogs sniff out Vietnamese rhino poop for eventual genetic analysis

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:59 am

  from the WWF facebook page WWF: Dogs to sniff out the state of Vietnam's critically endangered rhinosVietnam – Highly trained detection dogs are being used help to determine the population status of the Javan rhino in Vietnam, in an attempt to save one of the world’s rarest mammals from extinction.WWF researchers have teamed up with national park rangers using two detection dogs from the United States to determine the population status of the Javan rhinos in the forests of southern Vietnam, home to one of the world’s last two remaining populations of the species.Javan rhino (rhinoceros…

• National Geographic Tales: Being Fed by a Wild Leopard Seal

  19 Nov 2009 | 5:13 am

  Paul Nicklen describes his most amazing experience as a National Geographic photographer - coming face-to-face with one of Antarctica's most vicious predators.

• UN: Fight climate change with free condoms

  19 Nov 2009 | 4:48 am

  from the associated press by MARIA CHENG The battle against global warming could be helped if the world slowed population growth by making free condoms and family planning advice more widely available, the U.N. Population Fund said Wednesday.The agency did not recommend countries set limits on how many children people should have, but said: "Women with access to reproductive health services ... have lower fertility rates that contribute to slower growth in greenhouse gas emissions.""As the growth of population, economies and consumption outpaces the Earth's capacity to adjust, climate change…

• Hippo vs Croc - Hippo wins!

  19 Nov 2009 | 4:39 am

  Images from spiegel.deEnglish Summary by G. SchubertWhen the crocodile got close to a group of approximately 50 hippopotami in Serengeti National Park (Tanzania),  it tried to flee by climbing upon their backs. One of the hipos attacked the croc nevertheless and according to the photographer, the crocodile did not survive.From the site:Attacke: Mit seinen mächtigen Kiefern greift ein Flusspferd im Serengeti Nationalpark (Tansania) ein Krokodil an. Flusspferde können äußerst aggressiv werden und mit einem einzigen Biss einen Druck von mehreren Tonnen entfalten. In dieser Situation war…

• 
  Delicious Tag: Anthropology

• Left Coast Press : Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research

  highfivincop

  20 Nov 2009 | 1:27 pm

• YouTube - Wade Davis: The worldwide web of belief and ritual

  cdorl

  20 Nov 2009 | 12:52 pm

• Wade Davis on endangered cultures | Video on TED.com

  cdorl

  20 Nov 2009 | 12:43 pm

• Folktexts: A library of folktales, folklore, fairy tales, and mythology ...

  anjuanzan

  20 Nov 2009 | 12:42 pm

• Society for Visual Anthropology

  Pinelandia

  20 Nov 2009 | 12:02 pm

• 
  Golublog: An Anthropology Blog

• Noncontemporaries MMOG

  Alex

  15 Nov 2009 | 12:35 pm

  I think the the thing that we’ve all figured out by now is that in virtual worlds people who do not share the same physical space get to interact with one another synchronously. This is true of phones as well. And videoconferencing. They are, in Schutz’s terminology, contemporaries but not consociates — they share the same time, but not the same space. This is in contrast to different generations of people who, for instance, view monumental architecture or spend time in the same coffee house (“Oscar Wilde sat here”). These people share the same space, but not the…

• Rorty

  Alex

  14 Nov 2009 | 2:29 pm

  I think I am finally getting old enough to appreciate Richard Rorty. I spent a leisurely morning reading some of the essays in Consequences of Pragmatism and enjoyed them — particularly this long quote from “Method, Social Science, Social Hope”, which cuts through several tangles of anthropological ethics: I said that… it was a mistake to think of somebody’s own account of his behavior or culture as epistemically privileged. He might have a good account of what he’s doing or he might not. But it isnot a mistake to think of it as morally privileged. We have…

• The Kindle for the Academic

  Alex

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:14 am

  I have a piece on Inside Higher Ed on the Kindle for Academics which you can read, if you choose to.

• One thought

  Alex

  31 Oct 2009 | 3:55 pm

  Bureaucracy is the ice-nine of social organization.

• Gmar chatima tova

  Alex

  28 Sep 2009 | 12:20 pm

  What might it mean to undergo violation, to insist upon not resolving grief and staunching vulberability too quickly through a turn to violence, and to practice, as an experiment in living otherwise, nonviolence in an emphatically nonreciprocal response? What might it mean to make an ethic from the region of the uwilled? It might mean that one does not foreclose upon that primary exposure to the Other, that one does not try to transform the unwilled into the willed, but, rather, to take the very unbearability of exposure as a sign, the reminder, of a common vulberability, a common physicality…

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  Glossographia

• Leap second dating

  schrisomalis

  16 Nov 2009 | 7:07 am

  Archaeologists have long been used to being dependent on physicists for radiometric dating, but gravimetric dating? A new paper deposited last week to arXiv suggests so: The physical origin of the leap second is discussed in terms of the new gravity model. The calculated time shift of the earth rotation around the sun for one year amounts to $\displaystyle{\Delta T \simeq 0.621 s/ year}$. According to the data, the leap second correction for one year corresponds to $\Delta T \simeq 0.63 \pm 0.03 s/ year $, which is in perfect agreement with the prediction. This shows that the leap second is…

• Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1908-2009

  schrisomalis

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:28 am

  Word today that the renowned anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss has died this past weekend at the age of 100 (NYT obituary here). I posted last year in honour of his centenary. Read often but rarely well, his influence on the discipline is enormous and it is nearly impossible to conceptualize social anthropology without his work. Posted in Anthropology

• Pseudo-disciplines

  schrisomalis

  1 Nov 2009 | 9:40 am

  There is a fascinating short essay ‘Ancient History and Pseudoscholarship‘ over at Livius.org. I don’t share the author’s belief that most laypeople are able to distinguish pseudoscholarship from professional work, nor that there is an absolute decline in pseudoscience over the past few decades. I do absolutely agree that the prevalence of faulty reasoning and uncritical use of evidence by scholars in the historical and social sciences is far more problematic than the more outlandish pseudoscientific beliefs such as the ancient astronaut hypothesis. And it will come as…

• News roundup

  schrisomalis

  31 Oct 2009 | 8:11 pm

  Well there certainly has been a lot of action here since my post about the Embuggerance and Feisty fiasco. Alas, no word on any action on the part of the great Googly deity. Greetings to all newcomers arrived from Language Log, Language Hat, The Volokh Conspiracy, and parts a-Twitter. In lieu of thoughtful content, here are some things that have amused me over the past week: Various blogs have noted (with various ranges of dismay) a new pop-sci volume entitled Manthropology by Peter McAllister, which takes the well-known fact that there is a decline in both male and female skeletal…

• Mandarin vs. Cantonese in America

  schrisomalis

  21 Oct 2009 | 7:17 pm

  There’s an interesting article in the New York Times today about the increase in the use of Mandarin among Chinese-Americans, to the detriment of the formerly more common Cantonese. When we think of language loss in the US we rightly think of situations where English replaces the languages of more recent immigrants (or of Native Americans), but here we have an interesting case where two languages, each vital in China and sharing a common script, come to be in competition here due to the nature of social ties in American Chinatowns. It’s not just that more Chinese immigrants are…

• 
  Linguistic Anthropology

• American Anthropological Association 2009 Annual Meeting

  17 Nov 2009 | 11:51 am

  The American Anthropological Association will hold its annual meeting December 2nd through the 6th at the Philadelphia Mariott Downtown hotel in Philadelphia, PA. The theme for the 2009 meeting is "The End/s of Anthropology".Below is my annual partial list of panels and meetings of interest to linguistic anthropologists, including those sponsored by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology.There

• The Invention of Saying-things-that-don't-strictly-accord-with-empirical-fact

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:56 am

  (Sorry for the long delay between posts. I'm writing up my dissertation research, which I will defend in a couple of weeks.)I recently enjoyed seeing the film The Invention of Lying. The film's premise is that in an world where all human speech must accord strictly with empirical fact (or as the film's tag line puts it, "a world where everyone can only tell the truth"), Ricky Gervais inexplicably

• Another political non-lie

  14 Aug 2009 | 12:26 pm

  I've been hearing an awful lot about health care reform in the US this summer - even from British outlets. It's all a bit disconcerting, especially the riotous town hall meetings and the arguments that seem unmoored from the facts.FactCheck.org has a nice piece debunking seven falsehoods related to this debate, two from proponents of reform and five from opponents.I'm interested, though, in a

• Who speaks Shoshone, and when?

  21 Jul 2009 | 10:49 am

  A comment on last Sunday's Weekend Edition radio program inspired me to think about two questions. A participant in the Shoshone/Goshute Youth Language Apprenticeship Program (SYLAP) commented:Someone will step in. You can even bring in a white man to [run a business]. But there isn't going to be a white man who can speak your language.I wrote about the first of my two questions on Sunday. (What

• What is a "white man"?

  19 Jul 2009 | 9:47 am

  This morning Weekend Edition Sunday featured an interesting story on the Shoshone Youth Language Apprenticeship Program being held at the University of Utah campus this summer. Toward the end of piece one learner, a young Shoshone woman, described why she decided to forget about business school and instead study linguistics.Someone will step in. You can even bring in a white man to [run a

• 
  Media/Anthropology

• Social Networking in Iran

  John Postill

  20 Nov 2009 | 9:51 am

  via Social Text Facebook updates, Twitter “tweets”, cellphone camera photos and video and SMS instant messages were ubiquitous in the media coverage of this summer’s post-presidential election crisis in Iran. But is the medium ever the message? Inaugurating our new regular online-only feature Social Text invited pieces from scholars of Iran, new media, and visual culture, and asked them to think through the contradictory promise of technology. Annabelle Sreberny places new technologies in the context of prior political uses of small media in Iran. Hamid Dabashi explores the…

• Social media activism in Barcelona – a few questions

  John Postill

  19 Nov 2009 | 8:14 am

  In recent years millions of ordinary people in the global North have joined in the explosive growth of social media. These can be described as user-driven Web media where people create, mix and share all manner of digital contents. Although the interdisciplinary literature on social media is currently bourgeoning (see Boyd and Ellison 2007, Ellison et al 2009, Gilbert et al 2008, Ryan 2008), one relatively neglected area is the uses of social media for advocacy, campaigning and activism. Recent examples that have attracted the attention of the news media include the use of blogs and mobile…

• List of resources on the social Web

  John Postill

  19 Nov 2009 | 7:44 am

  via Linda Elen Olsen’s blog (Thanks to @vidarfalkenberg, @AndersHusa, Bob Berkman, Dave Karpf, Paul Caplan, Mirko Tobias Schaefer and especially Ronald E. Rice for some great suggestions!) BOOKS History of the Internet - Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet (1997) Critical approaches to the Internet - Martin Lister, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant, and Kieran Kelly: New Media: A Critical Introduction (2009) - Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu: Who controls the Intenet – illusions of a borderless world (2006) - Jonathan…

• Así nació mi ciencia

  John Postill

  18 Nov 2009 | 4:27 pm

  Un relato de ciencia ficción Me llamo John Foster y así nació mi ciencia. Nació en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, en la Facultad de Periodismo, para ser exactos. Hace ya bastantes anyos de esto (perdonad que lo ponga con enye y que no gaste acentos, es por el teclado y tal). Vi el panorama y me asuste: interminables partidas de mus en el bar, tabaquismo total, salas de conferencias rebosantes, cinco anyos de carrera, 250% de paro juvenil. Asi que me puse a estudiar indonesio con intencion de buscarme la vida en otros lugares. (Habia pensado en estudiar swahili, pero el director…

• CFP: Locative Media and Communities, 28 Feb 2010

  John Postill

  17 Nov 2009 | 2:52 am

  CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue of International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Title: Locative Media and Communities Guest Editors: Katharine S. Willis (University of Siegen) Keith Cheverst (University of Lancaster) TOPIC The development of locative media applications is not simply about the physical location or social setting in which the interaction occurs, but rather about situating the media within the social setting of a community. This Special Issue will explore the potential for locative media applications to support community cohesion and the integration of such media within…

• 
  Google Blog Search: Anthropology

• Social Networking in Iran « media/anthropology

  John Postill

  20 Nov 2009 | 9:51 am

  media/anthropology · Home · About · Articles · Books · Contact · Events · Papers · Reports · Reviews. Social Networking in Iran. 2009 November 20. tags: Facebook Iran, Iran, social media, social media Iran, social networking Iran, ...

• Beacon College Blogs: Dr. Terri Ross: Adventures in Anthropology!

  Beacon College Blogs

  20 Nov 2009 | 7:34 am

  The anthropology courses at Beacon College are taught in a seminar style format with students actively engaged in dynamic discussions around the lesson focus. Students explore the fields of anthropology to discover the origins of ...

• Dienekes' Anthropology Blog: Y chromosome diversity, human ...

  dienekesp

  19 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm

  Dienekes' Anthropology blog is dedicated to human population genetics, physical anthropology, archaeology, and history. Feel free to send e-mail to Dienekes Pontikos, or to visit my other three sites: Anthropological Research Page, ...

• T.A.: Lazy Anthropology : Office Space

  Timothy Archibald

  19 Nov 2009 | 8:53 pm

  Borrowing heavily from really well done projects found on The Selby and WTJ, mine was a fast food attempt that resulted in a form of lazy anthropology. But it did feel like Xmas as everyone was sending forth their shots for me to see. ...

• The Anthropology of Freud and Woytyla | Socyberty

  Moron Savant

  19 Nov 2009 | 6:15 pm

  Obviously, between Freud and Wojtyla, there is almost no common ground. The former asserts that man is overtly sexual; the latter nuanced his thoughts on the being sexual beings of men and women. But, as the succeeding write up would ...

• 
  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

• Oral health and frailty in the medieval English cemetery of St Mary Graces

  Sharon N. DeWitte, Jelena Bekvalac

  19 Nov 2009 | 6:43 am

  The analysis of oral pathologies is routinely a part of bioarcheological and paleopathological investigations. Oral health, while certainly interesting by itself, is also potentially informative about general or systemic health. Numerous studies within modern populations have shown associations between oral pathologies and other diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and pulmonary infections. This article addresses the question of how oral health was associated with general health in past populations by examining the relationship between two oral pathologies…

• Brief communication: Bone remodeling rates in Pleistocene humans are not slower than the rates observed in modern populations: A reexamination of Abbott et al. (1996)

  Margaret Streeter, Sam Stout, Erik Trinkaus, David Burr

  19 Nov 2009 | 6:43 am

  Bone histomorphometry has been applied to the lower limb cortical bone of Pleistocene humans to establish age at death and to determine bone remodeling rates (Abbott et al.: Am J Phys Anthropol 226 (1996) 307-313). Both of these procedures require the determination of osteon density and mean osteon size. Previous analyses of Middle and Late Pleistocene human lower limb bones have produced bone remodeling rates that are slower than those determined in a more recent archeological sample. Recalculation of the data reported in Abbott et al.: Am J Phys Anthropol 226 (1996) 307-313) has revealed…

• Oval in males and triangular in females? A quantitative evaluation of sexual dimorphism in the human obturator foramen

  Guillaume Bierry, Jean-Marie Le Minor, Mathieu Schmittbuhl

  19 Nov 2009 | 6:43 am

  Among the numerous pelvic traits presenting sex differences, the obturator foramen is classically described as being oval in males and triangular in females. However, no demonstrations or detailed studies seem available in the literature. The purpose of this work was to study quantitatively this trait using Fourier analysis, because this methodological approach is particularly well adapted for discrimination between different simple shapes. Using this approach, an outline can be characterized by a series of harmonics (1 to n), each defined by two Fourier descriptors: amplitude (Cn),…

• Population-specific deviations of global human craniometric variation from a neutral model

  John H. Relethford

  19 Nov 2009 | 6:43 am

  Past studies have revealed that much of human craniometric variation follows a neutral model of population relationships. At the same time, there is evidence for the influence of natural selection in having shaped some global diversity in craniometrics. In order to partition these effects, and to explore other potential population-specific influences, this article analyzes residuals of craniometric distances from a geographically based neutral model of population structure. W.W. Howells' global craniometric data set was used for these analyses, consisting of 57 measurements for 22 populations…

• Body proportions of circumpolar peoples as evidenced from skeletal data: Ipiutak and Tigara (Point Hope) versus Kodiak Island Inuit

  Trenton W. Holliday, Charles E. Hilton

  19 Nov 2009 | 6:43 am

  Given the well-documented fact that human body proportions covary with climate (presumably due to the action of selection), one would expect that the Ipiutak and Tigara Inuit samples from Point Hope, Alaska, would be characterized by an extremely cold-adapted body shape. Comparison of the Point Hope Inuit samples to a large (n > 900) sample of European and European-derived, African and African-derived, and Native American skeletons (including Koniag Inuit from Kodiak Island, Alaska) confirms that the Point Hope Inuit evince a cold-adapted body form, but analyses also reveal some unexpected…

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  Neuroanthropology

• Wednesday Round Up #90

  dlende

  19 Nov 2009 | 7:21 am

  I’m hoping this is the last of the recent Thursday editions – the end of the semester is getting close, and with it the heavy teaching load I’ve had on Mondays and Wednesdays. But onto the round up – it’s free will, climate change, mind and anthropology this week. Top of the List Gretchen Reynolds, Phys Ed: Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious Very cool – exercise prepares the brain to deal with stress. Is this the new version of no pain, no gain? Carlos Reynoso, Ciencia Cognitiva y Antropología del Conocimiento The summary page for a fascinating seminar on…

• Anything but flat: A book review

  Paul Mason

  17 Nov 2009 | 10:09 pm

  The Lancet’s recent commission on the effects of climate change on health[i] is a reliable diagnosis of pertinent contemporary issues on a global scale. One of the conclusions of this report is that “The most urgent need is to empower poor countries, and local government and local communities everywhere” (Costello et al.  2009:1728).  It is a conclusion to which Human geographer Harm de Blij also leads his readers in his  recent book, The Power of Place [ii] . For provocative thought, scope, and endeavour, the book is unquestionably comparable to the works of Jared Diamond, Tim…

• Complete this quote: “If a meme is to dominate the attention of a human brain, it…”

  Paul Mason

  15 Nov 2009 | 2:37 pm

  How would you complete this quote?   “If a meme is to dominate the attention of a human brain, it…”  This week’s quote comes from The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins first published in 1976 (I have the 1989 edition where the above quote appears on page 197). Dawkins is a well versed writer with a convincing literary style. An earlier work that also alluded to selective processes in culture, Le Hasard et la Nécessité: Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie moderne, by Jacques Monod is also a fascinating read that I would reccomendThis decade of research…

• Taking Anthropology Online: AAA Workshop

  dlende

  13 Nov 2009 | 3:08 am

  The annual American Anthropological Association meeting will take place in Philadelphia from December 2nd – Dec 6th. I will put on a workshop entitled “Taking Anthropology Online: Strategies for Teaching and Scholarship” on Thursday Dec 3 from 12:00 noon to 2PM. Here’s the description: Informants, students, communities, culture, inequality, data – all increasingly have a life online. This workshop will cover the basics of anthropology online, with a focus on content production, scholarship and teaching. Specific areas covered include: blogging, social networking,…

• Wednesday Round Up #89

  dlende

  12 Nov 2009 | 4:04 am

  I’m leading off with an important set of readings on genetics in relation to neuroanthropology, including plastic genes, gene-culture interactions, and critical takes on genetics in society. Then we’ve got some other top reads, followed by a section on applied anthropology that includes a lot of pdfs you can get online. Then the mind and an anthro grab-bag to finish it off. Genetics David Dobbs, I’m Not Vulnerable, Just Especially Plastic. Risk Genes, Environment, and Evolution, in the Atlantic Genes are not bad, they are just sensitive. Dobbs covers his own feature article…