October 2010 Blog Posts (18)

2010 Henry Myers Lecture at the RAI PODCAST (for those who missed it)

For those who missed the 2010 Henry Myers lecture by Sir Geoffrey Lloyd at the RAI, you can listen to it as a podcast at the following URL:
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2010/09/sir-geoffrey-lloyd-humanity-between-gods-and-beasts-ontologies-in-question/

Added by René Wolf on October 31, 2010 at 10:06pm — 1 Comment

Listen to a podcast of the Daniel Miller/Matt Cook talk at Birkbeck on 28 October 2010

Dear Members
Daniel Miller and Matt Cook gave a talk entitled 'Home' at Birkbeck College London on 28 October 2010. This event has been recorded and can be listened to/downloaded at the following URL:
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2010/10/daniel-miller-and-matt-cook-home/

Added by René Wolf on October 30, 2010 at 11:30am — No Comments

Playing with Identities

As we pause for a moment between recent debates about prayer and performative acts, stimulated by Phillip Swift's delightful paper on Cosmetic Cosmologies in Japan, and look forward to Daniel Miller's An extreme reading of Facebook, I find myself rummaging through Evernote and stumble across something written last December.… Continue

Added by John McCreery on October 30, 2010 at 5:30am — 1 Comment

Citizen Science

As we think about goals and projects for OAC, I'm reminded that scholars in all sorts of fields are trying out new approaches. The reminder is from an email newsletter I receive because, several months ago in a fit of enthusiasm I signed up to participate in GalaxyZoo. Never actually did much. Got too busy with OAC and other things. But, as food for thought, here is that newsletter.

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Added by John McCreery on October 29, 2010 at 7:26am — No Comments

On the Light Side

Last night Ruth and I and a couple of friends went to see Wakiyaku Monogatari (Cast Me If You Can, literally "The Bit Player's Tale").

Wakiyaku Monogatari is a romantic comedy whose protagonists are an actor, who always plays second fiddle to the lead and lives in the shadow of his famous playwright father, and a young, aspiring actress. They meet accidentally on a train platform where the actress is being accused of being a pickpocket and the actor saves the…

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Added by John McCreery on October 29, 2010 at 6:30am — No Comments

For Tuche*

(found poem)

Techne is universal.

In the logic of Maths,

10 x 10 =100

everywhere,

anywhere

and forever.

In Euclidean Geometry,

a L » 90º

of a circle.

In the conventions

of Physics

the freezing point of water

is always °C

Techne is settled knowledge.

The Pythagorean theorem

a2 + b2 = c2

is…

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Added by Achirri Ishmael on October 28, 2010 at 7:00am — 1 Comment

Around the Infonosphere

Originally posted on my blog at jacoblee.net Around the Infonosphere is my regular report on the stuff I've found or have been reading out there in the infonosphere.

Philosopher Mandel Cabrera over at Lexilalia discusses the… Continue

Added by Jacob Lee on October 26, 2010 at 7:39am — No Comments

Spanish & Anthropology Abroad in Argentina, Chile, and Peru

Dear OAC, I got this because I'm a student member of AAA and thought I'd post in here for anyone interested. I am not affliated with this program and you'll need to email/call/mail them directly with any questions you may have.

Ciao,

Valerie

_____

Spanish Schools in Argentina, Chile, and Peru…

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Added by Valerie Feria Isacks on October 26, 2010 at 12:00am — 1 Comment

Performativity in Action

There's something wrong with the picture above. The text on the wall said, "Peeing is prohibited here," yet the guy did his thing. It's easy to put all the blame on the guy who did the action. With performativity, we can blame the text. We can question why the text, in this case, written in red, big capital letters, and simple language did not work. Was the text just a toothless graffiti or a…

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Added by M Izabel on October 25, 2010 at 2:00am — No Comments

Performativity: Embodying Texts

I'm not an expert of performance theory, but I do understand its significance specially in myth and folklore, religion and ritual, and aesthetics and technology. Humans are not only talkers but actors or doers as well. performance theory or performativity does not aim to value text or speech more than body or action. They are inseparable.

I have observed in indigenous communities how words are meaningless when they are treated only as texts. We have a lot of idioms in…

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Added by M Izabel on October 23, 2010 at 8:30pm — 7 Comments

A Five-Minute Talk

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Added by John McCreery on October 21, 2010 at 7:05am — 3 Comments

Mogollon Conference - Day 1

After leaving Phoenix at 6:00 am and discovering somewhere along the way that New Mexico is currently in a different (i.e. later) time zone, I somehow still made it to the conference in Las Cruces just in time for the first presentation following the lunch break.

Chuck Adams from the UofA kicked off a series of presentations on the use of space for rituals in the pueblos. Adams is the director of the Homol'ovi…

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Added by Paul Wren on October 20, 2010 at 4:51am — No Comments

The RAI's Education Outreach Programme has launched an Anthropology of Sport Photo Contest

The RAI is looking for photos (black and white or colour) which explore the following themes: Globalisation, Identity and The Body

The competition is open to anyone itnerested in anthropology, photography and sport.

All short-listed and winning contestants will have their work published in

RAI educational materials. In addition, for each thematic category a

£50 gift voucher will be awarded to the winning photograph.…

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Added by Nafisa Fera on October 19, 2010 at 2:20pm — No Comments

Indiana University and American Folklore Society launch Open Folklore Portal

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  Oct. 13, 2010

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Starting today (Oct. 13), students, researchers and the general public will have free access to scholarship that documents people's everyday lives in communities around the world, in cities as disparate as Bloomington, Indiana, and Banaras, India.

The Open Folklore portal web site, www.openfolklore.org, launched today during the 2010 American Folklore Society meetings in Nashville,… Continue

Added by Jason Baird Jackson on October 16, 2010 at 6:29am — No Comments

Anthropological research and journalism

I have recently re-joined the world of academia after spending three years as a journalist. As a result I have been weighing up the pros and cons of each and I would be interested to hear anyone else’s thoughts. Below are a few ideas about some of the ways the internet has changed journalism.

The best-seller in journalism has always been the base product, the “facts”. The biggest news agencies, like AFP, Reuters, and AP, sell what they call “pure news” or “just the facts”. Facts come… Continue

Added by Nathan Dobson on October 8, 2010 at 6:09pm — 4 Comments

Kushite Migration to Lake Chad

The best research on this is the work of Robert Blench, here:

http://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/pleins_textes_7/divers2/010020136.pdf

Added by Alice C. Linsley on October 6, 2010 at 2:35am — No Comments

DNA Confirmation of Kushite Migration

Research verifiying the Genesis record of Kushite migration from Africa into Eurasia can be found here: http://maxwellsci.com/print/crjbs/v2-294-299.pdf…

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Added by Alice C. Linsley on October 5, 2010 at 4:08am — No Comments

Situation Theory and Situation Semantics

In August OAC's Oscar González wrote in the Theory for Anthropology group that:

If somebody wants to arrange information for comparing situations looking for cultural signs into them, I think that Situation theory offers a language with capabilities for writing ethnographic information down and make formally well written comparisons.…

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Added by Jacob Lee on October 4, 2010 at 6:30am — No Comments