:: .. :: zerzaust :: .. ::

new adress

2007-07-20T20:57:00.000+02:00

this blog is now continued at: andreabenlassoued.at

vulgarity debate...revisited

2006-02-15T13:27:00.000+01:00

In an Anthropology News article called "Persian blogs against the dual language" ORKIDEH BEHROUZAN, a PhD-student at Oxford makes an interesting point connected to the vulgarity debate, that was brought up by Alireza Doostdar in the American Anthropologist. She says:

Today in Iran many experience a dual life, and
speak what I call a “dual language.”There is an
expansion of ambiguous talk routinely affecting
all aspects of a person’s daily life. Lying,
hypocrisy, fear of punishment and being judged,
and an urge to please superiors are all common.
In opposition to dual life in Iran, many young
Iranians are increasingly turning to Persian blogs
as gateways for speaking out.

Regardless of how we understand the vulgarity
debate, and whether or not vulgarity applies to
all non-literary forms of writing and all taboo
subjects discussed, this so-called “vulgar sprit” in
Persian weblogs is a means of confronting dual
language, by which some bloggers intend to use
somewhat unconventional modes of writing to
express what they understand as their “pure” and
“real self.”

Whether certain trends in blogging can make a
difference in the future of Persian society is a
tempting question. Although we can’t determine
where this path of uncensored self-expression is
leading to at present, there are clues that they will
lead to a promising destination

Mohammad caricatures...

2006-02-04T19:16:00.000+01:00

The last few days I had a lot of discussions with friends and family about the cartoons in Jyllands Posten. I read lots of newspaper-articles online as well as Blogposts.

The sources which I found most interesting were Daniel Variscos blog post: Much Ado about Something Rotten in Denmark as well as a blog post by Mona Eltahawy (also quoted by Varisco) called A Mountain Out of a Molehill Over Danish Cartoons.

If you read german, there's a good overview at perlentaucher on the reactions of european media and an entry at wikipedia.

Here is a link to the "mohammed image archive" -

"an archive of numerous depictions of Mohammed to serve as a reminder that such imagery has been part of Western and Islamic culture since the Middle Ages -- and to serve as a resource for those interested in freedom of expression."

german-muslim-hiphop

2006-01-19T08:46:00.000+01:00

I went for a coffee with a friend after classes yesterday. She converted to Islam some time ago and told me about muslim hiphop in german - something I never even knew existed. The band she was so fascinted from is called "ammar114" and all of their songs are freely downloadable. I just tried, but their website seems to be down currently. Anyway, I found a link to a songtext (Schwester) and some of their songs are free for download here.

commenting essays...

2006-01-16T19:44:00.000+01:00

For the next few days I've got the "pleasure" of commenting about 60 student essays on three different questions (Boas; Levi-Strauss; Mauss & Van Gennep). I've already read a few and what's really surprising to me is the range of quality, because most of my students are in their first year of studies and should therefore have roughly the same background. And for those of you, whoe are curious, here are two positive examples...

fighting with complexity

2006-01-10T19:55:00.000+01:00

I'm trying to find a nice'n'easy explanation of the term "complex society" and seem to get more lost, the more I am searching.

Ulf Hannerz: [the term complex society]"is used somewhat imprecisely to refer mostly to societies with a developed division of labour and with sizeable populations. State organiszation, urbanism, organized social inequality and literacy tend also to be aspects of the complexity involved. (in Barnard & Spencer 2002)

Sydel Silverman: The term complex societies haslong been used in anthropology to refer to state-organized systems, including those of premodern times [...], those of the modern industrialized era, and those whose states stem from postcolonial or other recent political transformations.
(p. 292 in Barth, Gingrich, Parkin, Silverman 2005)

entry at wikipedia: a complex society is a social formation that is otherwise described as a formative or developed state.

Wilson/Introduction to Archeology: Societies which show in particular increased specialization and occupational separation. As inferred by the social typology set out by Elman Service, in complex societies, people "no longer combine, say, the tasks of obtaining food, making tools, or performing religious rights but become specialists at one or other of these tasks"

interesting comment by Hannerz:
The rather loose usage my be criticized - what society is realy not complex? - but anthropologists have obviously found it a convenient alternative to such terms as "modern society", "industrial society" or "civilization", with which it may partly overlap but which entail emphases or connotations one may prefer to avoid.
(again in Barnard & Spencer 2002)

THE at SM

2006-01-10T08:35:00.000+01:00

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is blogging at Savageminds since yesterday:

I expect to submit a handful of blogs on a daily or bi-daily basis for a week or two, and my chosen topic is a staple on this site, namely the role of anthropologists and anthropology in a wider public sphere.

So he will write on a topic that he also adresses in his book Engaging Anthropology (Amazon)(see here, here and here for a review by Lorenz Kazaleh at antropologi.info)

Instead of repeating myself, I'll make a new proposal for productive public engagement in each posting on this site. Tomorrow, I'll give you the story of a sport club in Drammen (a town near Oslo, where I live) and its struggles to incorporate minority children in its activities, and suggest how anthropologists might intervene. It goes without saying that I'm keen to receive your views, objections and suggestions as we go along.

Apart from interesting discussions that will surely follow his posts, there's something else happening here, which I want to keep an eye on: How are relations within academia influenced if well established anthropologists start blogging? I guess, like Will, I can say: "I'm looking forward to reading your posts, Thomas."

Cultural choices in the aftermath of the Tsunami

2005-12-27T14:40:00.000+01:00

I listened to a broadcast on Ö1 today, it was about the Nicobar Islands. The presenter (Andreas Obrecht) spoke to Simron Jit Singh and Oliver Lehman who published a book called: Die Nikobaren. Das kulturelle Erbe nach dem Tsunami. [The Nicobar Islands. Cultural choices in the aftermath of the Tsunami.] Singh is research fellow at the IFF Social Ecology, Lehman chief editor of "Universum Magazin".
The book is published in both english and german and aimed at helping the survivors of the catastrophe to revive their traditions and customs. 50 of these books were sent to the Nicobar Islanders to "give these people a manual for their own, lost culture".

"The publishing house Czernin will donate all profits from the book’s
sale to the Sustainable Indigenous Futures (SIF) Fund, which supports
medium and long-term development projects for indigenous peoples from
Tsunami-affected areas on the Nicobar and Andaman Islands."

Magic orange peel

2005-12-14T09:49:00.000+01:00

I was waiting on the airport, having a coffee and chatting to some tunisians when we started talking about the cold weather and heating systems here (in Tunisia) and there (Europe). Quite commonly used here for heating a room are kanun (what I’d describe as coal in a clay pot). The danger connected to them is CO2 development. So what I was told by my newly met tunisian friends was, that one puts orange peel on top of the kanun, which stops CO2 development. I later checked if I had understood correctly, but even Nasr insisted: out of experience this is what works best against the dangers of CO2. I’d really like to know how that works.

Where’s home?

2005-12-14T09:48:00.000+01:00

I’m back in Tunisia with my husband. It’s a weird feeling to go shopping to study, to cook, to just have my daily life here again. For some reason I feel more at home here now than back in Vienna. Well, my husband is here, true. But all my friends are in Vienna – sure I know quite a lot of Nasr’s friends, but there’s still some language barriere between us and chatting with them remains in quite general topics due to lack of fluency. However, studying works much better here – there’s less distraction through meeting or calling someone quickly, but getting online requires more effort than at home: I have to go to the internet café (“PUBLINET”).

Joerges, Winner, STS

2005-12-02T17:17:00.000+01:00

I spent the last few days studying for an exam I had yesterday. And although I'm a bit exhausted today, I'm already preparing for my nextone on Wednesday (which will be my last exam ever - if I don't decide to do a doctorate!)

Here are just a few links I came accross while studying (or maybe rather procrastinating) for the exam yesterday which was in STS (Einführung in die Wissenschaftsforschung - Wissenschaft, Technik, Gesellschaft):

Langdon Winner: Do Artifacts have Politics?

Bernward Joerges: Do Politics have Artifacts?

Bernward Joerges: Die Brücken des Robert Moses
This one is very similar to the english one above, but very inspiring to read as it's written beautifully. By the way - the article that I enjoyed reading most, was one by Bruno Latour:

Latour, Bruno. 1995. Ein Türschließer streikt. In Latour, Bruno: Der Berliner Schlüssel - Erkundungen eines Liebhabers der Wissenschaft. Berlin: Akadmie Verlag, 63-83.

Bernward Joerges has got lots of his publications available online
too and I also found interesting course material for "Kultur und Technik"
by Richard Rottenburg at the University of Halle.

Technorati : STS

backside of blog-reading

2005-11-21T12:15:00.000+01:00

I was browsing a few more blogs of people who attended the WSIS and some of them are still in Tunisia today. What then happened was that I really got "Reisefieber" (travel nerves, itchy feet?). So, if you want to see a few nice pictures or descriptions or haven't planed the next holiday yet - here's some inspiration.

WSIS - notes & quotes

2005-11-20T10:59:00.000+01:00

Just a few notes & quotes about the WSIS - am not trying to give a good overview here, much more want to relate experiences of attendees:

Yesterday, we [i.e. Ethan Zuckerman and "his partners in crime", I guess] were warned that our session [called Expression under Repression] could be cancelled by the Tunisian authorities. We also discovered that the session wasn't listed in the official program guide. Today, we came to the room where the session was to be held and there was a sign on the door stating that the workshop was cancelled. Friends who passed by the UNDP booth on the WSIS floor earlier today heard gossip that the security forces would appear at our session and anyone who attended would be arrested. And I got a few SMSs from people who'd asked about our session at the information booths and had been told there was no information on our session.This low-grade harrasment did nothing to dampen our turnout for the session. Ethan Zuckerman

here's some more information by the Berkman Center for Internet and society on the same incident.

the obvious presence of military, police and tourism police should strengthen that sense of security. In three kilometres around the airport and around the Kram Expo, there was a policemen at every 250 meters and the closer you got to the Kram Expo, there were even policemen on horseback and special forces. Tunesia must be a country with more policemen than inhabitants. In front of every official hotel was a policemen with a stengun and in the hotel secret service people were just chatting as natural Tunesians, while in the meantime checking potential contacts with Tunesian dissidents. more from Jak Boumans

Another post by Ethan Zuckerman about the "Citizen's Summit":

a counter-summit, [...] where issues like the Internet and human rights - which have been difficult to get onto the main WSIS agenda - can be discussed.
A meeting Monday to plan the summit was disrupted by Tunisian security forces, who prevented organizers from entering the Goethe Institute, where the meeting was being held. Since then, there have been reports that human rights activists have been beaten by government-based thugs after meeting with summit attendees, and a French journalist attacked by security forces. In other words, it hasn't looked like a welcoming climate for a citizen's summit.
But then he talks about the actual meeting: I kept waiting for a commotion in the back of the room that never came. Later the same eveingn: the barriers to free expression in Tunis became all too clear as we walked out of the compound to catch taxis for dinner. Walking down the narrow street that from the human rights center to the main road, we past a block lined with tough looking men in street clothes, some on motorcycles. There was no apparent reason for thirty men to be standing on this corner of the street - no cafe, no shops of any sort - and no indication that the group was moving at all. [read more here]

More information about all that? Ndesanjo at "Digital Africa" has got a few more links, the OpenNet Initiative has a report on internet filtering in Tunisia.

Want to read something more positive?

A very sweet blogger I met in Tunis was representing Jordan in the summit...in the "Reach out"-Initiative

which is basically a dialogue between UK and Arab youth that aims at connecting both the western and Arabic culture, in an attempt to break stereotypes, spread awareness, and work together to make a difference. more here.

Technorati : WSIS tunis

CFP: Communities & Technologies 2007

2005-11-20T01:31:00.000+01:00

Conference Website: http://ebusiness.tc.msu.edu/cct2007

Following the success of two prior conferences, we cordially invite
submissions to the third International Conference on Communities and
Technologies (C&T 2007), hosted by Michigan State University. This
biennial meeting serves as a forum for stimulating and disseminating
research on the complex connections between communities - both
physical and virtual - and information and communication technologies.

C&T 2007 welcomes contributions from researchers in many fields,
given the multidisciplinary and collaborative nature of inquiries
into the interaction between community and technology. Past meetings
have involved researchers working in such areas as computer supported
cooperative work, computer supported collaborative learning,
artificial intelligence, information retrieval, human computer
interaction, information systems, community informatics, knowledge
management, and Internet studies; across such fields as anthropology,
communication, computer science, economics, geography, information
studies, information systems, management science, political science,
psychology, sociology, and telecommunication. The conference program
includes competitively selected, peer-reviewed papers, as well as
workshops, tutorials, and a small number of invited speakers.

Important Dates:
November 13, 2006: Paper submission deadline
December 4, 2006: Deadline for submission of workshop proposals

Conference Themes:
There are many definitions of community. We focus on the notion of
communities as social entities comprised of actors who share
something in common: this common element may be geography, needs,
interests, practices, organizations, or other bases for social
connection. Communities are considered to be a basic unit of social
experience. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can
interact with communities in many complex ways. For example, ICTs
can support community formation and development by facilitating
communication and coordination among members. Conversely, the lack
of attention to the surrounding community context may inhibit the
design and effective use of ICT innovations. Hence, new research
into the creation, use, and evaluation of ICTs aimed at community
support is appearing at an increasing rate. New phenomena such as
blogs, podcasting, smart mobs, and the popularity of social network
software illustrate some of the new areas for research into the
powerful and changing connections between community and technology.

Empirical, conceptual, and design contributions are invited,
involving a range of methodologies and approaches. These might
include application designs, innovative frameworks, case studies,
ethnographies, experiments, survey research, network analyses or
economic studies.

Topics appropriate for submission to this conference are manifold.
Examples of some of the vibrant areas of communities and technology
research include, but are not limited to:

* virtual community formation and development
* communities of interest and practice, knowledge sharing and
organizational learning
* communities and innovation
* community informatics
* technical support for communities
* innovative applications of communityware
* ad hoc communities and ICTs
* innovations in community technology design
* system platforms for e-community research
* design methods for communityware
* ICTs and geographical business communities (e.g. clusters and/or
regional development)
* ICTs and virtual business communities
* community e-commerce business models
* interactions between online and offline communities
* social capital, communities, and technology
* communities and e-government
* ethnographic and case studies of virtual communities
* trust, privacy and security issues in virtual communities
* communities, technology and social movements
* interaction in large scale online communities
* persistent conversation in technology-facilitated communities
* supporting collaboration in local and distributed communities
* economics of technology-facilitated communities
* inter-organizational communities and technology
* communities, technology, learning and education

Submitting Papers and Workshop Proposals
Completed and original research papers of not more 20 pages must be
submitted electronically to the conference website, and will undergo
a peer review process. We are preparing submission guidelines and a
conference management facility to enable online submission. In the
meantime, general information about C&T 2007 is available at the
conference web site.

We also invite the submission of proposals for workshops, which will
be held on June 28, the first day of the conference. Workshops can
be either half or full day in length and built around specific themes
relevant to the conference. Workshop proposals should be 4 pages in
length, and should define the theme(s) of the workshop, the main
activities and goals, the background and contact information of the
organizer(s), the maximum number of participants in the workshop, the
means of soliciting participants, and the method of selecting
participants. Proposals should also include a brief summary of no
more than 150 words suitable for describing the workshop in the
conference program.

Proceedings
As with prior meetings, the Conference on Communities and
Technologies Proceedings will be published by Kluwer Academic
Publishers.

Conference Organizers and Contact Information
The 2007 meeting is being co-organized by Charles Steinfield and
Brian Pentland of Michigan State University, Mark Ackerman of the
University of Michigan, and Noshir Contractor of the University of
Illinois. Questions regarding C&T 2007 should be sent to the
conference email address, which is cct2007@msu.edu.

Del.icio.us : CFP

just trying...

2005-11-19T14:53:00.000+01:00

After a quick search for possiblities of tagging my blogposts, I just installed "zoundry" [lite] - a blogging editor. Sould make blogging easier and tagging no effort at all.

Del.icio.us : blogging-technicals

Blogtalk Reloaded

2005-11-16T09:01:00.000+01:00

its not gossip any more... blogtalk reloaded will be held at the 2nd and 3rd of October 2006 in Vienna again...

via randgaenge

tag: Blogtalk2006

Papers on Weblog-Research online...

2005-11-15T11:18:00.001+01:00

Kommunikation@gesellschaft, a web journal dedicated to research into information and communication technologies went online with a new issue yesterday, I guess - and i'ts about weblog-research. I'm really excited to delve into all these papers soon! More backgroundinformation in an entry by Jan Schmidt.

A few papers and links to the presentators of the "Kongress kulturwissenschaftliche Technikforschung" to be held from 25 th - 27 th of November in Hamburg are already online too...

via this entry at antropologi.info

Internet connection problems as result of the WSIS...

2005-11-14T23:28:00.000+01:00

how ironic...Marouen, a tunisian blogger whom I met when I was there this summer, writes about the internet connection problems he's experiencing now...as a result of the WSIS...there's not much more I can add apart from a slight suspicion of political reasons behind the whole thing...read more here.
Oh, and before I forget: here, la blogeuse writes about the traffic problems that my husband has been talking about the last few days as well...

Weblogs 2005

2005-11-14T23:13:00.000+01:00

Wednesday and Friday this week I'll attend a workshop on Weblogs in Linz/Austria, one of the organisers is Jan Schmidt.

Topics include:

Wednesday

basics of weblog research (Jan Schmidt, Klaus Schöneberger)
weblogs in organisations - PR and marketing (Tim Fischer, Martin Roell)
weblogs and Journalism (Martin Welker)

Thursday

weblogs in organisations - knowledge and project management (Thomas N. Burg, Dieter Rappold)
weblogs and political communication (Roland Abold, Martina Kausch)
teaching with weblogs / e-learning (Hans Mittendorfer, Tanja Jadin, Bernad Batrinic)

of course there's a weblog as well as a wiki available - all in German though.

I'm really looking forward to meeting and talking to all these people - hope there will be plenty of time in the coffee breaks!

tag: jkublogs05

Rites of passage...

2005-11-13T22:42:00.000+01:00

Arnold van Gennep, a flemish anthropologist and ethnologist wrote a book called "Les rites de passage" in which he talks about transitions and the rites people perform with them. Transitions can either be spatial (house warming parties), seasonal (e.g. harvest festivals) or "life cyclical" (birth, death, marriage) and the whole idea is a "universal" - e.g. can be found in many different cultures around the whole world. Almost everywhere life is characterised by turning points, we don't experience it like a calm flow of days after days after days.

Now why do people perform rituals at these turning points in their lifes? Because these transitions don't come naturally, they don't just happen. You're not born as an adult, as a couple or whatever - you're made one and through the ritual this is made more real for the individual.

And it's true. Really.
When I got married in September, it was actually two days that we celebrated. One day was a very quiet one. The contract was signed with a registrar who came into the home of my husbands family and the only people who celebrated with the two of us were his closest friends and family. We had a nice meal, fotos were taken etc. Then, a few days later, we had a big party with lots of friends in Tunis, where he's living now...and only then, after an exhausting evening, with lots of music and dancing as well as changing my robe twice, did I really "feel" married.

I wonder how it will be when we've celebrated our party here in Austria with all my friends and family as well...but alas, there are still some bureaucratic hurdles to jump...until he can join me here.

second thoughts on teaching...

2005-11-11T12:00:00.000+01:00

Today is Friday - one of these Fridays that I'll be teaching.

For the last few weeks lectures went quite well on my part, although I'm not so sure if our students share the same opinion. After all we're asking them to work quite hard(at least compared to local standards!) :

reading a (for them surely) difficult chapter every week. In our lessons we don't go through the chapter bit by bit but ask them to work on it themselves - through presentations as well as discussion of different aspects. I'm not so sure if they really appreciate it that much, that we don't take the responsibility of reading from their shoulders - but one day they'll definitely harvest the merits of knowing how to read and get the gist of an article themselves.

Another requirement are two articles that they have to write and publish online in their blogs. We also suggested that they use their blogs for reading reflections ("Lesetagebuch"/reading diary) but as it wasn't compulsory only a few of them are into it yet. Alas, there is still lots of time until the end of this term, so they still have the chance of discovering the joy of quick and easy online publishing!

Handbook for bloggers and cyberdisidents

2005-10-28T02:24:00.000+02:00

Today I skyped a bit with Martin about Tunisia, the tunisian blogosphere and the upcoming WSIS. I'm still wondering if and how I can afford to attend the conference, but now - as my research interests have changed slightly - I guess I'll stay in cold, rainy Vienna.

Anyway, related to Tunisia is an entry that I just read at Dienstraum - about The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyberdissidents. Looks like some people in Tunisia could really make use of this in a few weeks, when reporting online about the World Summit of Information Society (WSIS). Here's a link to the PDF-Version of the Handbook for free download. More information about the book at the Dienstraum- link provided above.

rethinkig research III

2005-10-26T20:48:00.000+02:00

At the beginning of march I started to use my blog for commenting on all different sorts of things...and I discovered a Blogger, just around the corner: Jan Schmidts Blog is still one of the ones I read most regularly. He's also one of the few bloggers I've met personally.

Interesting thoughts I also discovered now in my posts around mid-march, I was...

wondering what blogging our not-yet-finished works could do to the discussion about the author-reader-relationship in anthropology .

Then I spent some time traveling and just by chance I read an e-mail by a young scientist...our mail-conversation developed in a very interesting way and soon Chana (at Tempus Fugit) switched to writing in english about her thesis because I convinced her! Seeing her work growing (as well as advising a wee bit) was a very rewarding experience.

rethinking research II

2005-10-26T20:28:00.000+02:00

Adi Kuntsman's Cyberethnography as Home-Work was another article that impressed me...sadly I didn't summarise but just cite it in this blog-post.

Blogs as electronic learning journals, an article by Armstron, Berry and Lamshed is something I should look at again...I had completely forgotten about this one and now I wonder if I should go through my blog-archive more often. Who knows what jewels are hidden there!
:-)

Five different ways into Blog research by Liz Lawley is a nice blogpost which I was very excited about when I found it...end of february...

[note to self: interesting to see the fun I had in discovering relevant literature]

At the same time I started to summarize [and comment] an article about "Blogs as plattform for the ideal speech situation" [by Elmine Winja, proper name: Understanding Weblogs: a communicative perspective] in a few blogposts...to see if working this way with my blog was fruitful.
To be honest: it wasn't.

rethinking research

2005-10-26T19:50:00.000+02:00

In January this year I started thinking about a research topic for my final thesis in anthropology...first thoughts (this really feels ages ago now, in hindsight) were about virtual ethnography (I had just looked into Christine Hines' book Virtual Ethnography and Miller & Slaters' The Internet an Ethnographic Approach). I wondered if I coud do an overview of the methods anthropologists used to do research online and wanted to relate them to the outcome - showing that method is never seperate from result. My supervisor then asked me to look for a "topic" - a methods-only-thesis was no real option for her.

Soon after that I discovered Blogging thoughts by Mortensen & Walker
as well as an article on open source anthropology by Kerim Freeman and "Making the electronic text canonical" by Alex Golub.

Kerim Freeman and Alex Golub were the first anthro-bloggers I started reading, but antropologi.info soon became one of my favourite anthro-blogs too (in those days before savageminds I was really searching for long to find some more academic bloggers from my own field).

As I see now, by mid Februrary I was already reading Lilias blog - and preparing a presentation about weblogs at the department for anthropology of europe.
(had I known then that this presentation was postponed, I wouldn't have worked so busily...another sign that I really need deadlines for getting going!)

At the same time I wondered:

[...] if keeping a blog could be useful for an anthropologist...in keeping and editing "field notes", links, ideas, snippets of thoughts - whatever. What about people stealing your ideas? And isn't a blog through it's very nature of being public going to influence the way you write about "the others"? Does it make sense to keep a blog in "normal" anthropological research? I mean I do see the point in doing so when one's into "virtual ethnography", but what are the limitations of blogging - are there any?

Reading Alireza Doostdars The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging was another eye-opener and made me think a lot. It was the first article on Weblogs by an anthropologist that I got my hands on! As it was published in the American Anthropologist it made me sure that the direction my interests were heading was a new but "accepted" one in my field of studies.
[to be continued]

references: early anthropologists (& institutions) of the british tradition

2005-10-26T14:51:00.000+02:00

a) important anthropologists:

Tylor
Frazer/wikipedia
Frazer/NNDB
John F. McLennan (Encyclopedia Britannica)
Andrew Lang

Details for McLennan:

Died 16 June 1881 (born 14 Oct 1827)
British lawyer and anthropologist who undertook a vast comparative research of the ceremonies of marriage. His theory of social evolution, in which he first used the terms exogamy (marriage outside the group) and endogamy (marriage within the group), stemmed from his interest in the survival of primitive cultures. He did much to stimulate and guide anthropological research. He developed influential theories on cultural evolution, kinship and the origin of religion. McLennan's pioneering work on totems (as survivals of primitive worship of fetishes, plants, animals and anthropomorphic gods) had a great influence upon contemporary social scientists, including Sigmund Freud. McLennan was influenced strongly by Darwin's theory of evolution.

source

b) Institutions:

conference-discussion

2005-10-24T09:19:00.000+02:00

Mp3-files of the ZKM-conference are now online. All in German. There's a general introduction as well as contributions about Podcasting, Participatory Digital Producing, Democracy and corporate blogs.

via plasticthinking

gossip - blogtalk!

2005-10-24T09:00:00.000+02:00

I: *whisper*: Have you hear the latest, hottest,...news?
you: no, whats that? tell me!
I: There might be another BlogTalk!
you: really? Great! Who told you?
I: Read it at Thomas Burgs' blog.

Here the links to BlogTalk1, 2 and the BlogtalkDownunder

link to my "tutoriums-blog"

2005-10-21T07:49:00.000+02:00

here's a link to the blog that I'll use for teaching this semester:

http://geschichtetutorium.blogspot.com/

critique of any kind is very welcome!

yemen from an outsiders view...

2005-10-17T23:46:00.000+02:00

Just about four years ago I learnt my first view words of arabic in Yemen...I spent 3 months there - three months well spent. With two other fellow students I studied in the capital, Sana'a, after four weeks of studying we started travelling the country and did so for two more months. We had a fantastic time discovering the country and its hospitable people. A very special place to which we only happened to travel by accident was Soqotra. In a taxi from Aden to Mukalla a doctor asked us if we wanted to stay for a few days in his house...of course we did! When we arrived in Mukalla we stayed in the same hostel with him and on the next day he handed us over the key to his house as well as a letter to his neighbour. We went to book a flight and on the next day we arrived on the island - not knowing a word of soqotri, the local language, neither the location of the house where we were to spend the next seven days. Nevertheless we enjoyed ourselves a lot - discovering the island bit by bit. Ever since I wanted to go back. I've been there for only one week last year in spring but as soon as I can afford the trip I will go - this time with my husband, who is also very keen on yemeni history and culture.

(If I got you interested: the webpage of the Friends of Soqotra is a good place to find out more - also there is Rowan, a volunteer who works with a womens organisation on the island, she keeps a very sweet livejournal)

But how come I'm thinking about all these things today?

Well on wednesday my arabic course starts again, and Hiam, my sweet teacher from Baghdad is as strict as she is good looking...
:-)
So to motivate myself I read blogs written about Yemen.

One is german: Sana'ani - Ein Jahr im Jemen
It is written by two journalists who are working for "zeit.de".

The Arabic Adventure is the second journal that I want to tell you about. It's, much more personal and written by Birgit, an anthropology student and friend of mine. She started studying arabic in Sana'a a few months ago and she's in the same school where I used to stay. Reading her entries though, makes me think that things have changed a bit in Yemen, since I was there. Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy these links, although they only provide a tiny glimpse into a very different world.

useful links for teaching with blogs

2005-10-14T16:19:00.000+02:00

Ewan McIntosh
This is a summary of action research funded by the John Dickie ICT Action Research Award from Learning and Teaching Scotland. The original research report is titled “Using ICT as a Means of Supporting the Gifted in Language”, and shows how several new “social technologies” can improve writing and reading skills, as well as encouraging higher order thinking skills.
Here are more "beta-chapters" of the same ongoing project.

Blogs as electronic learning journals [PDF-document] by Laurie Armstrong and Dr Marsha Berry

update:
how not to use blogs in education
how you should use blogs in education
both entries are by James Farmer

the educated blogger by David Huffaker

teaching with blogs at wiredpen

edublogs

references to blogs as work-diary for students

2005-10-14T14:50:00.000+02:00

I will give a "tutorial" this semester at my department. This is a course which is usually combined with a lecture. The lecture that my tutorial is connected with is on the history of anthropology. Participation in the tutorial isn't compulsory but nevertheless there are usually around 50 or more people attending it.

Therefore we (I'm not alone, there is another, more experienced student whom I'm teaching with) will split the course into two smaller groups. We hope this smaller groups will enable the students to discuss more freely the reading assignments as well as what's not clear yet from the lecture .

Our requirements are:

* attending the course
* writing 2 essays - which were usually given to the lecturers in paper-format.

This time I'll try to get the students to write a blog about their reading-assignments (what we call a "Lesetagebuch"/reading diary in German) so that they'll get used to the idea of writing about what they've been reading/thinking about. As they comment or summarize what they read from week to week, writing the "big" essay should be much easier, I hope.

Marks will only be given on the essays that they have to write, but of course a glance at the weekly entries in the blog will clarify if the idea behind the "reading diary" works. What I am also wondering about is, if the students will start commenting each others entries or if they need incentives for doing so.

Tak at savageminds wrote in July about a similar teaching project that he's planning, I wonder though, if there are more people with experience in this area.

its seems like ages...

2005-10-13T10:05:00.000+02:00

It's really been a long time for me since I wrote my last blog entry. Now it feels kind of strange to talk about personal things in this public sphere, but I want to continue anyway.

What happened?
Well, I've been to Tunisia - living there for the last three months. I just came back a few days ago and now everything at home here in Viena seems very different and strange to me. How can people be so cold? How come the don't show their feelings more openly? Why is everyone always so busy?
These and similar thoughts go through my mind, as I go about the usual business of coming back: washing, arranging all the new stuff that I brought with me in my tiny room (by the way: I'll move to a bigger room in the same flat - for the same price!).
Yesterday we had the introduction of our tutorial. It was just a few minutes that me and the other student introduced it, but it felt strange to stand in front of 300 people, tlaking about what you're going to do with them, IF they will attend our class. What made the whole thing even more interesting was, that I was introduced as Andrea Ben Lassoued by the lecturer - it was the first time that my new name was mentioned in public. Although I really like it (wouldn't have changed mine if I didn't) I still wondered what people would think. Is it obvious that I just got married? To a Tunisian?

news from Nablus

2005-09-12T15:22:00.000+02:00

a friend of mine sent me the following mail the other day
I thought her experiences could be of interest for others too.

For a long time I’ve been trying to motivate myself to write a long mail to all of you telling you about the situation here, about what I see around me – to be your eyes in this part of the world that is so often presented to us at home in a distorted way.

It took me so long to finally start the mail, because I had (and have?) the strange feeling that the more time I was spending here the less I understood.

I’m not sure that the fog has been lifted yet (is that THE light over there? J) so I warn you in advance that what is to come might be very chaotic.

What prompted me to write today of all days?

I was on my way home a few hours ago with Alice, Leila (from Naples) and A. (from Nablus) and we stopped to have some kunafe along the way (kunafe = warm and sweet and wonderful, very sugary but there’s also cheese inside – a nutritionists nightmare but so good…).

All the way we had been joking and laughing, but in the kunafe place (for lack of a better word to describe the place) A. started talking about his experiences during the second Intifada.

A. is only 19 years old, a good footballer, funny,… He seems like a normal, really nice guy, but today he told us about things he has seen and experienced, that I think no one should ever have to see.

I take him as an example, but most people here in Nablus, in all Palestine, could tell you similar stories, stories that make you feel so helpless that even crying seems to be hard.

There is a whole generation without any hope for a better future, without any perspectives – even plans that seem so normal to us like being able to choose freely what to study, to find a job, to go on a vacation – “simple” things that fade away at the latest in the cold reality of a check point, of a nightly invasion…

And it seems its getting worse instead of better.

In these days there is a lot of talk about the withdrawal from Gaza, “we are experiencing a historic event”, is what they tell us, and pictures of crying settlers being driven away so cruelly from “their” houses and “their” land seem to be omnipresent.

I fail to see the historic importance of Sharons move (and I welcome any discussion with people who see things differently, I don’t claim to be the bearer of the one and only truth).

Of course it’s good that the settlers are out of Gaza and I hope that the people there who have suffered so much will finally be able to live a more peaceful, “livable” life.

But at the same time the number of settlers in the West Bank has risen about\for\of?? 9000 persons (with only 7500 settlers leaving Gaza and 4 – in my opinion – pro forma evacuations in the West Bank) and ultra-orthodox movements like in the extremist settlement of Tapuach (located between Nablus and Ramallah) are getting stronger and stronger.

The withdrawal from Gaza gives Sharon (and America) the opportunity to be the good guys again, good guys that want peace, that give the Palestinians chance after chance, while the Palestinians (evil terrorists all of them) continue to go to bed with the sole wish to drive all Israelis into the sea.

Politics is such a dirty business, but living here just makes me want to study it even more, in the hope to understand one day why all this is happening.

The withdrawal from Gaza doesn’t change the almost unbearable living conditions in the West Bank – life here is like being in a big open air prison – for Palestinians I have to add, for us internationals its much easier, especially getting out (of the West Bank).

It makes me feel guilty in a way knowing that because I was lucky enough to get born in good old Austria I can leave Nablus any time I want, go to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv for the weekend, visit my friend in Jordan and come back again,… all this without problems, while the Palestinians, the ones living here, cannot do that.

With one of my English classes in the Balata refugee camp (girls between 14 and 16) I did a lesson on traveling (I was not sure if it’s a good topic at the beginning, but it turned out to be) and one girl said that her only wish is to see Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is about 1 1\2 hours from Nablus if you go by car and don’t have problems at the checkpoint.

Around Nablus there are approximately 8 checkpoints (and military stations on some of the hills, so that you can hardly go through the mountains). For a young male Palestinian its almost impossible to leave the city, it doesn’t matter whether he is studying in another city or he wants to visit somebody. You can apply for a permission, but it depends on the mood of the person in charge if you get it.

Also for all the other people - women, old people, etc - its hard and the soldiers can always find a reason to stop you from passing or treat you badly if they feel like it.

I was shocked the first time I left Nablus via the Howwara Checkpoint and I saw people waiting patiently behind metal bars – images that you keep in your head, that remind you of cattle farms and that make you sick.

I don’t want to demonize the soldiers, I try to understand them in a way.

The first time you see them it’s like a shock – they are so young and seem almost like kids playing war with their big machine guns and uniforms.

Young Israelis have to start their military service when they are 18 (unless they decide to study something that the army considers useful for their purposes in which case you can do your service after you finish university, but the majority of the young people starts at 18) and it lasts 3 years for the guys and 1 ½ (or 2, am not sure at the moment) years for the girls.

It’s hard to refuse to serve and it takes a strong person to go through the whole process, knowing that your refusal will make your future life in the Israeli society much harder (f.e.: potential employer asking about where you served in the army, answer: no army, hmmm… sorry, job is already taken.. ) Until not too long ago people also got sent to prison for refusing to serve in the army. There is such a strong pressure on young people to “do something for their homeland”, “to defend their country”, that I consider myself proud to know people that had the determination and the guts to say no to all that.

I don’t know if I would have had the strength to refuse if I would have been in their position (18 is pretty damn young), so each time I’m at a checkpoint I’m wondering about how many of them don’t even want to be there and how they are going to think after having lived 3 years in this militaristic environment…

I could go on but since this is already soo long I feel like I should give you a break J

I don’t know how much of this you know or is obvious for you anyway, especially because I’m sending this to a very diverse group of people, diverse in experiences and interests - as well as in background and origin - and some of you know this conflict from the inside.

I just felt the need to let you know a little of what I am experiencing here, I already feel so helpless every day seeing the injustice around me and this is the least I can do – tell those of you that don’t have the opportunity to come here about the things I see around me.

This is a very impulsive first account and there are so many things that I haven’t even mentioned… so many things that have many more layers and of which I only described a tiny part of the first layer, there is so much more to say – just let me know what you think, and in case I haven’t been clear on something I would be happy to go more into detail.

I’m planning to write more soon, but knowing me it will still be a good while…

Uff, I think I should really stop now,

thanks if you’ve made it until here J

Sidi Hassine

2005-08-28T13:11:00.000+02:00

Sie nennen ihn „le chat“, „der Kater“ wegen seines großen Schnurrbartes und er ist ein regelmäßiger Besucher des Cafe de Nattes. Jeden Tag am späten Nachmittag erscheint er leise und trinkt seinen Pfefferminztee. Halblaut gibt er ein paar spitze Bemerkungen in Richtung Touristengewühl ab und nach einem Stündchen verabschiedet er sich, eben so sanft wie er erschienen ist, wieder vom regen Treiben.
Sein Haus hat als einziges im ganzen Dorf eine gelbe, und nicht wie üblich eine blaue Tür und als ich ihn nach dem Grund hinter dieser Ausnahme fragte, meinte er dies sei wegen dem Heiligen in seinem Haus. Im selben Atemzug fragte er mich, ob ich ihn, den Heiligen, denn sehen wolle.
Was für eine Frage! Natürlich interessieren mich Heilige, besonders jene die in Häusern herumgeistern. Ich nahm also den Rest meines Crepe au Chocolát als Opfergabe für den (eventuell hungrigen) Heiligen mit und gemeinsam machten wir uns auf den Weg zu seinem nahe gelegenen Haus.
Die Räume des Hauses waren um einen kleinen Innenhof angeordnet, weißer Jasmin und üppige rote Bouganvillaen rankten sich an den Mauern. In der Mitte spendete ein kleiner Limettenbaum Schatten in der Nachmittagshitze.
Die Witwe von le chats’ Bruder, eine füllige aber gebrechliche Mitfünzigerin, hieß uns durch die halboffene Tür des Wohnzimmers willkommen. Ich betrat den weiß gekalkten, kühlen Raum um sie, wie üblich, mit zwei Küssen zu begrüßen. Sie sah gerade fern und lehnte mit dem Rücken an einem ebenfalls weißen, sargähnlichen Gebilde.
„Hier liegt Sidi Hassine“, erklärte le chat, „einer der 101 Heiligen Sidi bou Saids“. Obwohl ich in einem Hotel schon einen solchen Sarg gesehen hatte, der dort gleich neben dem Computer im Büro steht, war ich doch etwas überrascht diesen Heiligen in einem Wohnzimmer anzutreffen.
Nachdem wir auf die Dachterasse gestiegen waren, von der man einen wunderschönen Ausblick auf den Bou Kornine hat, sah ich dann auch die typischen drei Kuppeln, ein Merkmal von Gräbern lokaler Heiliger: eine große in der Mitte und rechts und links jeweils eine kleinere. Das Grab Sidi Hassines ist jedenfalls nicht mehr öffentlich zugänglich, obwohl mir le chat erzählte, dass er sich noch daran erinnern kann, dass - als er ein kleiner Junge war –viele Gläubige kamen um einen Knopf zu machen in dem gelben Tuch das den Sarg bedeckte. Dadurch würde dann ein Wunsch erfüllt, so sagt man. Von diesem gelben Tuch her rührt auch die Farbe seiner Tür, eine Tür von der sein verstorbener Bruder sagte: „Eine Tür, eine Art zu leben.“

Tunisian blogger meeting

2005-08-27T13:18:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I met the Tunisian blogging crowd at their 6th get together in Sidi bou Said. Mister MMM-A-list-blogger-Subzero-Blue :) initiated the meeting; he and his sweet wife were the ones that I met first – when we finally managed to recognise each other after some phone calls! I guess there were around eleven or twelve Tunisian bloggers, I was the only foreigner, because my American “twin sister” didn’t show up in the end.

We had a few interesting discussions ranging from polygamy, the WSIS through to why some Tunisian youngsters are so keen on immigrating to Europe. The location was very romantic: the Café Sidi Chabaane, called after a marabou whose tomb is located in the middle of the Café, gives a nice view of the Golf of Carthage. The lights were curling around the shore like a necklace of pearls and I hope one of the many pictures that were taken will show at least a bit of the beauty of the place. I hope I can keep in contact with at least some of the nice folks I met yesterday.

Here’s a link to Subzero Blue’s blogpost about the meeting and there you also find links to all the other people who participated. One person I want to point out though, if you’re interested in the WSIS is Marouen (blogging his life) . He’s the “WSIS Tunisia Youth Caucus Coordinator and has got lots of interesting background information. Karim posted a few nice pictures of the meeting already.

Tags: tunisia blogger meetup blog blogging

anthropologist blogging fieldnotes

2005-08-01T11:09:00.000+02:00

A friend of a friend is in Santo Domingo to do her fieldresearch about local religion. She is writing a blog about it and if you want to smile about something go and read her experiences.

reasons for inviting people

2005-07-27T12:02:00.000+02:00

The other day we were supposed to have some Americans who are doing a study on tourism in Tunisia staying over for dinner at our place. I was a bit sceptical about that because they had been questioning my friend, who knows quite a bit about the topic, for quite some time and for free too. For some reason or the other research ethics and the equality in the relation between informant and researcher are an important issue to me. So when I heard that apart from talking to them for hours about all kinds of issues related to tourism they were also invited to our home and looking forward to eating Couscous with us I was not too happy. But the invitation was made and therefore things could not be changed without embarrassing one or bouth parties involved. The only thing that was left for me was giving advice to my frined that next time he thinks about it twice befor agreeing to a lengthy interview. He agreed and added that he might ask for money but also he mentioned why he had invited them although he knew that their relationship was quite an unequal one:

because they are ignorant and therefore need to be educated about my
country...

I guess the next time I am invited I will watch out for the real reasons of being invited to somebodys home!

CHERS CLIENTS

2005-07-25T20:44:00.000+02:00

Il est strictement interdit de naviguer dans des sites interdits ou
prohibés.
Veuillez prendre soins du matériel mis à votre disposition
En cas de problèmes, demandez laide du responsable présent
Merci pour votre compréhension

thats just a little note in arabic and french on the desk where my computer stands on, in my internet cafe Here is a great link related to the topic and the upcoming WSIS [World Summit of Information Society]

what happened....

2005-07-25T17:20:00.000+02:00

The reason this blog has been so quiet is that I am in Tunisia/Salammbo [yes, Flauberts one]. I am staying here for several reasons, one of them is to improve my arabic. I discovered many strange and interesting things so far....one of them being a magician.

We were strolling through the narrow lanes in the old market of Tunis not aiming for much except soaking up the atmosphere. Then we stopped to buy some henna and harkous [the stuff people call naqsch in Yemen, used to paint hands and feet]. The man sitting in the tiny shop let us browse his goods for some time which consisted of the strangest things i have ever seen [skewered dead toads, three little chameleons in a tiny cage, porcupine bristles lots of different dried herbs and different spices to make bkhur]. We were invited into the tiny shop and could therefore discover how he practised his art. Lots of people dropped in while we were there and quite a big amount got amulets for different kinds of problems. There were letters that had to be placed above the door to make ones husband stop deceiving oneself and a shopkeeper dropped in to get something to improve his business. I thought that something like that does not exist here and was pretty excited about experiencing it. Coming home and telling friends about what happened was even more interesting. The man, I was told, is a good for nothing ripping of people.

Skype me!

2005-07-05T11:39:00.000+02:00

Dina's got a very good post about her and other womens experience of using Skype and turning to "Skype me". I find it difficult to add another view point, as my experience was very similar, and I learnt quick (as quick as no one ever touches nettles twice). So this is just a recommendation to read, what she said.

U2 - Live Aid / Vienna

2005-07-03T13:30:00.000+02:00

Yesterday U2 played in Vienna [in the Ernst Happel Stadion], and London within a few hours. I wanted to go to the Vienna concerts, but tickets where more than my student budget allowed. Nevertheless I just listened to the version of "One"[mp3] which they played at the live aid concert in London. At the beginning Bono's says somehting like:

"this is our moment, this is our time, this is our chance to stand up for what's right. We're not looking for charity - we are looking for justice. We can't fix every problem, but the ones we can, we must. 3.000 africans, mostly children, die every day of a mosquito bite, we can fix that. 9.000 people die every day of a treatable desease like AIDS - we got the drugs, we can help them. Dirty water, death by dirty water, well, we can digs wells...
Eight of the most powerful man of the world are meeting at a golf course in Scotland - we have a message for them: this is your moment too, make history through making poverty history"

Here's a review of their concert in Vienna, and here at live8insider you can also view videos of the concert.
---
update: I just found a video with Dave Sifry about technoratis support for live8. (link from Supernova, through Buffer overflow, seems to be down now, though)

here's more background information about technoratis and bloggers support for live8

[mp3 above via live8insider]

Tags: live8

Korean visitor...

2005-07-01T15:27:00.000+02:00

Yungtak Cho, a 24 year old south korean student is staying with me for a few days - we met trough globalfreeloaders, he'll travel through Europe for the next two months. I just discovered he's also got a blog, and quite a few of his friends seem to have one too .

Something I learnt from him already:

Samsung is korean but "pretends" to be japanese because they sell more products as the reputation of japanese gadgets is better.

Traditional korean music (played with a flute) sounds like what I'd call new-age-music- and is very nice (I got a CD as a present!).

[notes] Blogwalk 9

2005-06-25T11:13:00.000+02:00

Topic: comparing blogs to earlier forms of writing. [comment: we never did this, we just came up with keywords connected to that, but actually I think that no group ever discussed that]

What are older practices that inform what we are doing today? Are we breaking away from this?

[the underlying question here would be: does my writing change, does what I can say change with the form it is presented in? - Answer: sure, it does. The question is: in which way. So new question: in which way does what I can say change in a weblog as compared to...-what should one compare it to? A diary? Fieldnotes?]

In the starting session we also talked for quite a bit about:

Tagging places...through churches (eg. On mountain tops), mosques....is it good to tag places? Possible outcome: wars around physical layers - is it liberating to have multiple digital layers/tags?

– so what can I actually do with this new way of interacting with my physical environemnet? Leave a note asking myself: what kind of plant is this? Then next person would answer (why do I not look it up in a book or why not ask the gardener – because it would be embarrassing – so do we create a place where it's not embarrassing to ask for what is thought of, as common knowledge? But also it's a way to bridge time...maybe there's just no-one to ask there, when we're walking through the park...and the gardener will be very happy to find a note saying: thats my favourite corner of the park, you did very well here. But what about leaving a note on the side of the lawn telling others, that the „park-police“ will come if they sit on the grass? Whats the difference between a sign saying this and a note that is tagged to a place and that I only can see if I've got a PDA? Does it create a hierarchy of information? What happenes when I tag the place „where I fell in love with xxx“ or someone else says: thats where I started to think about commiting suicide, that one is a really bad corner? What about conflicting ideas about the same place? What about building churches that don't offend any muslim? What about mosques that don't upset the christians ideas about this very special place? [We talked a bit about Ayodhya.] Will people think of this new dimension to their reality as real? Will there be a way to find out who left the comment? Whats the difference between commenting on man-made-things and commenting on nature? Well, guess people might answer back, nature would not.

Another idea: what happens if we start tagging people?

There was this project in Germany – „Stolpersteine“ (to remember jews): The major of the city (was it Munich?) they wanted to do this in, was against the project. Nazis would cause trouble, Sudetendeutsche would also claim their bit, lots and lots of minorities would start and claim a bit of this idea and it would never end.

This project lead us on to think about the way we interact, we create history. We asked ourselves: Will we lose general knowledge....it might be a huge challenge to us, to have different versions of the same history. Who decides what is true, if there are so many versions of the same event? (possible answer: power structures will still be there, people, institutions will still try to influence and official version /viewof events).

Another topic we talked about was ownership/full control over what one publishes. I think it was Sebastian who argued, that one gives up ownership of things when you publish them online. I think, people who don't want the stuff they put online, be put to use by someone else, don't understand something fundamental about the web.

The long afternoon discussion at the TU (where we tried to split up but didin't in the end) was also about the web as no-space, non-place etc. I offered a quick peek into Arjun Appadurai's ideas as well as Marc Augés' concept of non-places. Martin (?) had just read Augés' book and was very interested in hearing that. [etc.]

Tags: Microlearning, Microlearning2005, BlogWalk, Blogwalk9

protests at my department II

2005-06-23T14:50:00.000+02:00

Here is weblog that the protesters at my deparment just started. It only entry is a press release describing what will happen here tomorrow...in German only - sorry.
---
later: pictures of the protests are now on my flickr page.

NO MILK NO HONEY

2005-06-23T11:36:00.000+02:00

I just ordered a bright orange T-shirt here, (they also have got swimming trunks! - although I can imagine a funnier topic to talk about in my holiday!) and it's not any old T-shirt but one with a message that is sadly true: "Austria is not the Land of Milk and Honey". Background info about the campaign here and here in German.

Protests...

2005-06-20T23:22:00.000+02:00

On 24.th and 25.th of June there'll be the "Days of Social and Cultural Anthropology" at my department. It's a kind of mini-conference, a get together of professors and a few students who present recent work (programm available here). Quite interesting concept, discussed long ago and finally made come true.

In conjunction with this the students representatives (newly elected and old ones) are planning protests against the appalling situation at our department.

The problems people mainly see are the following:

- Überlastung von Studienprogrammleitern und Sekretariat - das Verhältnis von Prüfungen zu Lehrveranstaltungen ist an unserem Institut so schlecht wie an keinem anderen der Universität Wien

- die Stelle der zweiten ordentlichen Professur ist nach 5 Jahren (seit Prof. Wernharts Emeritierung) noch immer nicht nachbesetzt; die erstgereihte Kandidatin für diese Stelle hat schon vor einiger Zeit abgesagt, das Rektorat unternimmt nichts, um zu klären, wer sie ersetzen wird - da gleichzeitig unser einziger ordentlicher Professor dieses Semester beurlaubt ist, steht das Institut derzeit ohne Ordinarius da,

- ständige Kürzungen des Lehrbudgets (vor allem auch der vormals externen Lektoren und Lektorinnen), Kürzungen der Prüfungsgebühren, etc.

that is: secretaries and professors responsible for administration are overloaded with work, the second professorship is still (after five years!) not reoccupied (mainly due to the rectorate) and the teaching budget is being cut down constantly although student numbers are rising.

That the second professorship isn't reoccupied is especially annoying as our only full professor is on a leave at the moment, so my department actually hasn't got a "professor in ordinary" these days...

Anyway: I hope the efforts will be worthwhile, some pressure on the rectorate can only cause a change for the better.

Karen Nakamura

2005-06-20T21:32:00.000+02:00

Just a short note for those interested in visual anthroplogy:

I just discovered a new anthropology-related weblog:
photoethngraphy

Karen Nakamura is a "cultural anthropologist who focuses on disability and minority identity issues in contemporary Japan." She's an assistant professor at Yale and has also got a webpage dedicated to photoanthropology. Her doctoral research was "on sign language, identity, civil society, and deaf social movements in modern Japan." I wonder how long she'll stay with blogger.

anthropolgoy of science

2005-06-19T23:06:00.000+02:00

Don't know if it's me being ignorant, but I just discovered an interesting subfield of my own discipline. So here are a few odds and ends that are connected to the topic:

Lecture notes on the topic (MIT - Open Course Ware: provide a good intro, I guess, few references mentioned, though)

Course and reading list at the University of Texas

Atran, S. 1998. Folk biology and the anthropology of science: Cognitive universals and cultural particulars. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21: 547—609.

Cultural Anthropology
Volume: 16, Number: 4 (November 2001)

CASTAC-L - Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology and Computing Listserv. Send email to listserv@mitvmo.mit.edu

Anthropology Matters Journal, 2005, Vol 7 (1).
Special Issue: New methods in the anthropology of science and technology (ASA postgraduate panel 2003)

An Amazon List for books on the topic.

Another interesting course description and reading list.

A bibliography that seems quite interesting.

looking for media-anthropologists

2005-06-18T18:35:00.000+02:00

Next term there will be a series of lectures at my department, organised by a group of students who are interested in media anthropology. So if you know of someone that we shouldn't miss or are yourself interested in a short trip to Austria - here's your invitation.

Lectures will be every two weeks, starting in October, topics should/will include media/society/anthropology. We're trying to get a wide range of perspectives, therefore the rather fuzzy title.

A few afterthoughts on C&T 2005

2005-06-17T10:00:00.000+02:00

I’m sitting in the train back from Milan to Vienna. There’s no Wifi here, no, I’ll just post this later on.

One thing that I discovered at the conference (while watching Aldo typing away furiously on his computer) was Google desktop…for some reason or the other I have never heard of it.

Oh yes, Aldo: well, he reminded me of another friend of mine who is a professor at the university of Vienna, teaching “Informatics and Society” to computer scientists . The funny thing about this friend of mine is, that he’s actually analysing himself. That is: the main part of his lecture is about new forms of work that emerge around the internet economy – and he himself is working under similar conditions: with a laptop on his knees on the balcony of his house, at the weekend. Or surfing at lake Garda: no, not what you think! Not surfing the lake, no, surfing the internet for new ideas or just making up a new power point presentation the day before he gives his next lecture.

The good thing is that working in that kind of environment is definitely nicer than in a gloomy office. The back draw: work and free time just get too mingled and one seems never able to switch off – like me now: still thinking about the conference and the people I met there, although I actually could relax on a quiet comfy bed in an air conditioned train compartment looking at the beautiful scenery of northern Italy.

[notes C&T 05] digital cities in south africa/durban

2005-06-16T19:17:00.000+02:00

Digital cities in South Africa

Objective: understand relationship bew. Real and digital city

Argument: if you don’t understand the dynamics of the real city, digital city won’t help you much.

Abdu malik: writes about what it means to be African, to live in an African city: networks, find work through them etc.

Can’t talk about cities without talking about informal processes

Castells: space for oppositional action is still there – grassroot in the space of flows – using ict for oppositional politics would be interesting

Understandning informal networks and processes

The relationship betw. The space of flows and space of places

Grassrooting the space of flows

Value added by ict – Castells 2000

Smart communities

Empowerment and access

Socio-cultural responses to digital technology

Spatial constraints to ict access, but bridged e.g. by cell phones

Splintering urbanism – graham and marvin 2001: relevant to Durban, potential inequalities that could emenate from ???

Universal access – ICT-Centers not well mentained in townships

Sustainability and backbone support

Themes that arise from the literature:

Ethekwini ict policy

Ict-cities governance administration governance

Spatial connectivity amongst municipial offices I infrastructure

Enterprise wide GIS included the excluded: SMME

Coop govt. internal coordination city-city networks, other govt.

Ict & NPM efficiency, communication holistic approach emphasis on LED, SMME develomanet

agencies?

Networks community connective. Web site

Access skills dev., intranet empowerment of small firms , smart xchange e-

community strategy

literacy

socio-cultural responses to digital technology

spatial constraints to ict access

education and skills development

conclusion:

the dominant thinking amongst progressives is how the include the excluded in the urban fabric, and a great deal of urban theory and analysis is about seeking out the invisible city, transforming and integrating it into the visible city.” Khan 2004:40

Can the digital city make the invisible visible?

[will edit this rather rough notes when I go through the article]

[notes C&T 05] Aural communities and mobile technologies: Marco Susani

2005-06-16T10:54:00.000+02:00

Director of the Advanced Concept Group, Motorola, Cambridge, USA

Works at Motorola, rule there: don’t say telephone any more: prefer to say something like: device formerly known as phone…and Motorola does also stuff with TVs. Phones are messaging, imaging systems, more combinations can be expected in the future. Large part of what they do is experience design: thinking what people will do with the device, also effects that devices generate on the way people communicate, change of patterns of communication. Designing experiences doesn’t mean that you do that exactly – you enable experiences – like an architect.

Concept of “Aural communities”, images as subtle form of communication, a way of conveying experiences

Aural space as social spaces:

The social spaces we inhabit are immaterial, not only material – it’s not a room, but has qualities like a space – we can return there etc.

Next question: how many different spaces are there? (picture with different flower-like diagrams – will link that later on)

Classified like in Kamasutra (the way they look like! J)

People picking up a phone don’t ask any more: “how are you?”, but: “where are you?”

“Tribal community”

Communities bound by common interests, defined by territory, we are the group that meets at the pub every Wednesday –feeling of belonging

Messaging for the sake of messaging? (example of Italian youngsters)

Talk like on Skype, then type in a word and coffee shops in your are pop up

They do ethnography there at Motorola!

Do people blog about different TV-shows? Why would they do that?

You see, which one of your friends is also watching the same program on TV, then you click on them and start chatting about the program (because talk is content oriented).

Coordination of video content and programms on TV and all the rest of it: see who watches tv with you, talk or blog about it at the same time. Download a section of “sex and the city” and deliver it to friends (never mind the law! J), invite a friend to a pay-tv-programm. Social dynamics are that this community dynamics build around content – it’s a catalyser of a community.

Are now talking with MTV to discuss what happens if this is the future.

Rave parties: “community based on an event”

9/11 first event that has been documented in almost the same importance in TV and on the web…probably first example of mass access to a type of broadcast, in terms of social architecture… how could the next event of this relevance be documented, if its not about moving from TV to website, what about moving from both of these to blogging, imagined hypothetical 9/11 – techno parade in berlin, people taking pictures, sharing them, then start blogging about the event, and then social architecture is different. Then a blackout in new york happened. Last image: like the eye of a fly: everyone can contribute their own point of view, their own content and pictures as well as stories about the same event and then it all fits into a grid. Could also change our perception: why should I trust CNN? All of the aspects that we’re seeing in this little video are “out there” – they just stretched what’s out there into a strong vision, fact is, that these social behaviours already exist. Shouldn’t sociology be metereology, predicting the future?

Also did media diaries – what do people do with our stuff?

Blurb for the talk here.

blogging from C&T 2005

2005-06-16T09:58:00.000+02:00

Now, what shall I really say? Its an amazing conference, really diverse in the different disciplines covered and as I'm working as a volunteer I also get to talk to really interesting and "important" people in the field. There's this feeling of: "you can just go up to anyone and start talking to them" and thats what people (or at least I!) have been doing in coffee breaks and inbetween talks. Seems there are not too many people blogging from here though (Aldo started blogging again yesterday) and I'll try to give some short overview of things as soon as possible. Took many, many pictures and also volunteering I have access to the presentations given, though to put them online I have to ask first. There's Dani, a brasilian volunteer who's working as a web designer and she's planning to set up a webpage with all the contact information from people as well as the slides. But now I gotta get back to the first talk today: "Collective Action in Electronic Networks of Practice: An Empirical Study of Three Online Social Structures" sounds interesting, doesn't it?

integration...

2005-06-12T11:50:00.000+02:00

Just a short paragraph of the text, that I've been translating:

"I think to myself, that’s the process that I find myself in, to create a space in this Austrian society, in this white context, where I can breath, where I can live, where I can exist as a black woman. And that’s for me the only possible integration, where I can exist a s a human being."

translation day..

2005-06-11T08:42:00.000+02:00

today is a sort of translation-day, that is I'll try to earn some money by translating the dissertation abstract of a friend into english. It's an interesting one, but still it takes some time to get me going...especially as there are a million things to do, before I go to Milan (C&T) tomorrow (I'll volunteer there):

get recording device, Schilcher & tickets
finish translation
print directions to juan (side not: if you go to conferences, try to go via Globalfreeloaders.com, it's great fun!)
get paper and ink for printing stuff for tutoring

old news...

2005-06-11T08:24:00.000+02:00

but still worth knowing, what's going on in Egypt these days:

women’s asylum news
refugee women’s resource project @ asylumaid
issue number 51
june 2005

Egypt: demonstrators sexually assaulted whilst protesting against
‘flawed’ referendum

The BBC reported on 1 June that a number of women testified that
loyalists President Mubarak’s party had assaulted them during a
demonstration against a forthcoming referendum. The subject of the
referendum is the proposed multi-candidate presidential elections due to
take place later this year.

The women who complained to the police about incidents of ‘groping,
harassment and assault by men suspected of being government supporters’
also said that police and security forces stood by or shouted orders
when the attacks took place. Some women were said to have had their
clothes torn apart and were left completely naked in the streets. The
government response was to blame the assaults on ‘emotional tension’ but
others described the incidents as a ‘black day’ for Egypt and are
determined to bring the perpetrators to justice. Demonstrators
protested few days later in Cairo demanding that Interior Minister Habib
el-Adly resign after allegations that he allowed the sexual assaults on
women at the previous pro-democracy demonstration.

The incidents occurred days after the World Economic Forum published its
report putting Egypt under the spotlight on gender issues by stating it
has the largest social and economic disparity between the sexes amongst
60 countries studied, along with Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey. 56% of
women over 15 in Egypt are illiterate compared to 33% of men. As of
2003 only 2.4 percent of parliamentarians are female. The National
Council for Women says the report should have highlighted the
‘significant steps towards improving women’s participation’ in politics
but Dr Nawal El Saadawi, a leading Egyptian feminist and sociologist,
confirms that ‘women have no role in Egyptian politics, this is a very
male dominated class society. We have one man or one family rule; we
don’t have political institutions or political parties’.

Details on how the study was carried out can be found in WEF’s report
‘Women’s Empowerment: Measuring the Gender Gap’, available online at:
www.weforum.org/gendergap.

Mohammed also writes about it...as well as Ethan Zuckerman.

Don't know what to comment though, going to demonstrations here isn't always that fun too, but still something like this, I can't imagine happening...

Globalisation?

2005-06-07T15:03:00.000+02:00

I watched a very short but interesting video recently, called EPIC 2015 (there are two versions of it - a more positive/2014 and a more negative one - transcript here), and one scene in it (where they talk about everyone contributing to the media, although that just ignores important issues like the Digital Divide) made me think what just happened now: I read OLDaily and found out about an event (that is ICT & Creativity) here in Vienna. Is that what one calls globalisation or at least an effect of it?

holiday photos...

2005-06-06T09:16:00.000+02:00

they're not the greatest, but they're mine..

advantages of blogging?

2005-06-05T18:40:00.000+02:00

inspired by a post from anne galloway I wrote a post at our anthropology-students-online-forum (what a monster-word!)...where I presented working at Microsoft as a solution to the fear of many students that they won't get a job after their studies. The result wasn't a discussion on ethics. Replies varied and were about like this:

"where do I get the necessary work-experience they asked for?"
"well, your comment didn't help much, but a nice try anyway"
and then went of in a complete different direction...

After a comment by a discussion member to get back to the "real" topic of the thread one member replied that s/he would work for Microsoft if pay and work conditions were okay and then a bit later a comment was made that someone wanted to use the thread for finding out about something slightly different, namley what other students do to get a side-training, a second direction they go in their studies etc.

After all this description about what happend at anthropology.at.tf, my point here will be about advantages of blogging - because, to be honest, I was a bit confused about this way "my" thread developed. First people didn't discuss on what I was interested in, which might defnitley be blamed on me, not asking the question frankly, but then the last remark made me think about my own posting habits and I think I'm becoming more of a blogger now, savoring the advantages of the space you get through it more and more. At least to me a comment on a post feels less intruding even if it's on a completly unrelated topic and if someone feels that commenting in my blog would not be appropriate than the can write in their own blog. The discussion itself is spread out much more and maybe a bit confusing to follow, but each author has more control over how things develop in their own space...
-----
not to self: look at this kinda-reply by Annariitta

being on the edge...

2005-06-03T21:57:00.000+02:00

I read Lilias post of today where she cites a short passage of "Life between buildings" and then I went on a quest for anthropological concepts that might help there - concepts of space and place - being on the physical as well as "emotional" border of a group as an anthropologist/fieldresearcher as well as informant and so on...a few interesting references came up (like SUNTA, a short detour into Marc Auge's writings) but at the end I wasn't too sucessfull.

What occured to me though, was that Blogs as software themselves have some feature that makes them ideal for writing fieldnotes...they don't require immediate reaction to whats happening - like in a chat room or a phone conversation or even face-to-face contact. Bloggers observe, think about and comment....maybe they don't make as crazy models as anthropologists do...but still...

A citation that seems somehow relevant to this:

many fieldworkers have expressed what seems to be an inherent ambiguity of the experience of ethnographic study. To be a part of a group as well as an observer of its activities induced severe cognitive dissonance in one researcher; she "experienced a gestalt switch every two minutes" [Schiffman 1991: 78] between 'being' a participant and 'being' an observer.

source

blogging and the "big men" in anthropology

2005-06-02T10:04:00.000+02:00

Now, as a student you've got a certain way to look at "elders", "big men" or the like in your field. This is certainly true for me too but gets twisted in a funny way when one reads blogs.

For example Robert Borofsky was for a long time someone who had edited a horribly difficult book we had to read for an introduction into the history of anthropology... apart from that I didn't know much about him. Later I found out about a site he's got, called "Public anthropology"...and I liked the pictures there.

Marshall Sahlins on the other hand is the guy who wrote Two or three things I know about culture and Stonage economics, and one of our professors has got a lot of respect for him, which he certainly conveys in our lectures.

Now what changed for me is, that Sahlins is the chair on Alex' advisory committee and therefore I almost "know" him personally, or he seems somehow closer. Borofsky on the other hand was commented on in a funny way by John some time ago. He himself didn't seem to think that was soo funny and was quite offended by the post...they've had some trouble, it seems.

So I think blogging makes anthropology more fun, you get to know the human side of the "big men" and hopefully there'll be some women soon too!

Found later: more on this "respect" that changes:

Why join the AAA at all these days? You can usually get the journals online or from the library, the kerfufle about the 2004 meetings had something to upset everyone, and, believe it or not, some of us just aren’t interested in talking about the Yanomami any more. But AAA is where hiring happens, so people join because they have to, not because they want to.

source

Found at savage minds, an anthroblog that is definitely worthwhile reading (and gets people /Lorenz/me stressed out because there's too much to read *smile*), even if you're not an anthro-geek!

Janosch

2005-05-06T22:27:00.000+02:00


Got this tea today...and apart from it tasting nice, they've got a nice way to advertise it - Janosch.
:)
On the package it says "...ist ganz famos zum Träumen und Nixtun." - and doing nothing is what we'll be up to in the next few days: we will go to Tunisia. Tomorrow this time we'll hopefully already be in Monastir, (Mausoleum of Bourgiba), just now it's definitely time for  packing and finally getting organised!

Media Anthropology

2005-05-06T16:59:00.000+02:00

If you're into Media Anthropology, here's a very interesting link for you. The "annotated bibliography on media anthropology" - put together by the Media Anthropology Network.

never mind the title

2005-05-04T21:29:00.000+02:00

She (hazily, through the noise of the shower): What do you think about "Life, the Universe and Everything: An introduction to a few maybe useful sites for Anthropology freshers"?
He (lazily, through the toothpaste): Yeah, short and to the point!
She: You're kidding me!

So, I don't know what to call this, but I guess you gathered what it's about.

What this isn't:
It's not a proper *academic* article - nevertheless it might be useful;
It's not a know-it-all, comprehensive guide to the internet - just some sites I've particularly enjoyed.

So what are these sites I liked and why are they important?
Well, there aren't many of them, and that's because I've tried to restrict myself to "gatekeeper sites" each of which could be the starting point for a near endless exploration (or getting lost - so beware!).

Basics:

Internet Anthropologist, A "teach yourself" tutorialthat lets you practise your Internet Information Skills
antropologi.info, Social Anthropology in the News - blog maintained by Lorenz Khazaleh
A good (in German but with English links) introduction to useful anthropology-related sites by Lorenz Khazaleh

Interesting, but maybe not as useful as the other stuff:

Anthropologists' homepages
Anthropologists' blogs
Wondering what a blog is anyway? Well, I've got the right page for you: Here's a nice concise intro to blogging by anthropologist Kerim Friedman

For geeks only:

delicious, a social bookmarking tool
Still confused? Here's an intro to delicious
OpenAcademics, a peek into the future of academia on the internet

For those who can turn the volume down on their speakers:

Computer Mediated Anthropology (try to ignore the layout, if possible)

Bye bye Iran, hello Tunisia!

2005-04-29T20:09:00.000+02:00

Well, so much for the best laid plans... Apparently the Iranians put our visa applications in a drawer and forgot about them or something, so not just the warmongering Brit but even the Austrians had to abandon our trip - some might still go in 2 weeks, but not Andrea or I. We just consulted a last minute travel agent looking for anything Arabic, so now we're off to Tunisia next week, me for a week and Andrea for two. I'm disappointed about Iran after trying so hard to make it happen and getting so close, but we have to move on rather than dwell on the past. I've long harboured a desire to get to know the mother continent, and my only encounter so far has been a family day trip from Spain to Morocco many years ago, chaperoned by our student guide to his chosen merchants and gently fleeced - not what I had in mind! We'll see what insights this trip brings...

Bethlehem Bloggers...

2005-04-28T08:44:00.000+02:00

I've been reading their blog for some time now...and this is one of my favourite entries up until now. Here's a short description:

We are Palestinians and internationals who are living in the Bethlehem region (see Map), and who want to tell the world what it is like to be living in occupied territory, under an economic siege, encircled by a wall and military checkpoints: what it is like to live in a Palestinian Ghetto.

We invite you to come to see Bethlehem—to meet the people who live here and witness the occupied land of Palestine for yourselves. For those who cannot come, we provide you with this “weblog” so you can at least hear our stories: voices from the Bethlehem Ghetto.

I quite wonder how many people read this blog...

leaving for Iran soon...

2005-04-27T23:51:00.000+02:00

On Saturday we're off to Iran for two weeks - if everything works out fine, that is. Peter still hasn't got a visa, no one actually does yet - but we'll hopefully sort that out by Friday...things seem to be a tiny bit complicated with iranian embassies. Whatever - I was wondering if there're any kind of bloggers I could meet in Teheran or all the other places we're planning to go to, like Qom, Isfahan, Yazd, Schiraz, Persepolis, Maschhad and Tus. Hey, and here a great page for everyone who's planning to go to iran too...might help a bit for clumsy people like me...

Johann Stockinger's Diss.

2005-04-27T21:36:00.000+02:00

I was given this really big book the other day by one of my profs. He said I should be interested in it - and was right...and I guess Alexander should be too. So what is it? Well, I guess the best way to describe it goes like this:

"In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird [...] versucht eine hypermediale ethnologische Darstellungsweise als holistischen Ansatz einer ethnologischen Wissensrepärsentation zu entwickeln, der aus einem verflochtenen und iterativen Prozess aus Datenaufnahme, Datenanalyse, Darstellung, Publikation und Interaktion besteht. Besonderer Wert soll dabei auf eine zukünftige Weiterverwendbarkeit unter Einbindng fachspezifischer Metadaten und XML-basierten Auszeichnungssprachen gelegt werden."

In a nutshell: It's about Hypermedia-Ethnography, trying to work with Computers in all phases of anthropological research and especially focusing on XML. While I haven't found much on the web by the author himself, here's a project he worked on with some others.

"Informing ourselves to death?"-snippet

2005-04-24T23:48:00.000+02:00

I am reading an article by T.H.Eriksen, an anthropologist based in Oslo. This bit is really sweet and I want to share it with you:

In Milan Kundera’s beautiful novel La lenteur (Slowness),4 an unemployed
Czech entomologist is watching television in a hotel. Having grown up in a
society where information was portioned out with caution, carefully filtered
before it reached the masses, this man was accustomed to digesting information
critically, pondering its significance and relating it to a greater picture.
Catapulted into the multichanneled information maze of the West, he found it
impossible to make sense of what he saw on the screen. As soon as a topic had
begun to build up, it was stopped short and replaced by something else. (Postman
reports somewhere that the average attention span of Californian schoolchildren
is seven minutes. That is the time between commercial breaks on television.)
Kundera’s scientist speculates that Beethoven’s symphonies will be compressed
for efficiency, until one plays only the first eight bars of each movement –
ultimately, perhaps, playing just a single note. Kundera may not have been aware
of the fact that Paul Hindemith did something similar decades ago, in his
Christmas Cantata, which consists of a potpourri of familiar Christmas songs,
but only a few bars of each. Possibly intended as a celebration of modern
efficiency, or as an ironic comment, the Christmas Cantata assumes that much is
already familiar, and the listeners’ time is scarce anyway.

http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Engelsberg.html">Here's the article.

no use going back to yesterday...

2005-04-24T17:52:00.000+02:00

I was desperatley looking for this quotation from Lewis Carroll and couldn't find it - until I looked it up in project Gutenberg.

'Come, let's hear some of your adventures.'
'I could tell you my adventures--beginning from this morning,' said Alice a little timidly: 'but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.'

[notes: Introduction to "Media Worlds"]

2005-04-24T11:11:00.000+02:00

as our schtuff-site isn't working well I'll post my notes here - it's gonna be a summary of an article by abu-lughod, larkin and ginsburg:

In their *introduction* to *"Media Worlds"* Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod and Larkin argue, that the anthropology of media is an important field of study, as the "ubiquity of media worldwide means, that anthropologists encounter it in the diverse places where we work." (p. 1)

They assume, that a clearcut topic or area of study exists already and also state that the methodologies are clear too. Inspite of that the discussion about what media anthropology really *is*, is still an ongoing one now. An interesting insight into the matter can be found at the easa-subsection for mediaanthroplogy, in a pdf-document here.

They say that they "have attempted to use anthropology to push media stdies into new environments and examine diverse media practices that are only beginning to be mapped. (p. I) They think that media anthropology will be able to advance theory and method in both anthropology itself and nearby fields that are concerend with the study of media. What anthropolgy can contribute to the study of media is a global, comparative perspecitve. This also is one of their arguments: "the construction of media theory in the West [...] has established a cultural grid of media theory with the effect of bringing int visibility only certain types of media technologies and praciteces." (p. II) So in their book the'll try to show the diversity of media worldwide - or the diversity of the media world. Whatever.

As common concerns with media studies they see “how media enable or challenge the workings of power and the potential of activism; the enforcement of inequality and the sources of imagination; and the impact of technoliges on the production of individual and collective identities.” (p. III)

The next part of the article concentrates on the history of anthropologies concern with media. Important early authors like Raymond Williams Saadia's summarized an article of him here, Hortense Powdermaker, Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson are mentioned. The systematic engagement with “media as social practice” only started in the late 1980ies. Background to it’s development is a “relocation of geographic and theoretical focus” i.e. the development of anthropology at home. “These shifts […] catalyzed a critical rethinking of one of our most productive notions – culture – and the parameters of our key methodology: in-depth, intensive, and long-term ethnographic fieldwork. Increasingly, our theory and practice are unbounded, multisited, travelling, or “itinerant” […], a transformation that is particularly evident for those studying media. (p. IV)

Anthropologists, who now work in the field of media anthropology come from different backgrounds. Some of them worked in visual anthropology, others came to an interest in the area, as they realized the importance of media while doing fieldwork, also there seems to be an interesting track of discussion about how the “other” is represented in ethnographic films. Pierre Bourdieus (1993) work has been important for scholars with an interest in “the institutional sites” for the production of media. Another influence comes from Cultural Studies who also turned to ethnography as method – but the use of the term ethnography in Cultural Studies has been quite heavily criticised in our field.

“The work of Benedict Anderson (1991) and Jürgen Habermas (1989) have been central to those concerned with studying and theorizing the cultural effects of flows of people, ideas, and objects, flows crucially mediated by communication technologies.” (p. V) Especially important in this context are their concepts of “imagined communities” and “the public sphere”. Critics (Calhoun 1992; Fraser 1993;Robbins 1993) of Habermas’ work are shortly mentioned. Lacans’ notion of the imaginary (1967) gets also mentioned as something authors from various fields used to understand the construction of “national imaginaries” – “when media are harnessed by state and commercial interess as technologies of personhood.” (p. V) I wonder if there is a connection here to the “technologies of the self” (Foucault and Hutton 1998) – sth. David Brake also will go about to explore in his PhD, here’s his proposal. Appadurai (1991) and Daniel Miller’s (1992) work are mentioned in the context of anthropologys' longstanding interest in exchange. Here’s a post at a blog that hits a similar vein in the context of Open Source Software. And here’s another, more recent, one.

For a further overview on the available literature they point to Dickey 1998 and Spitulnik 1993.

[to be continued]

news...

2005-04-24T09:31:00.000+02:00

The last few days saw quite a bit of change in my little corner of the blogosphere. Chana , a belgian student, who's writing a thesis on weblogs has changed the focus of her research a bit and put her chapter index online for discussion. The new question reads as follows:

Blogging is a phenomenon on the rise in the world of the WWW; what is this new tool, and how can it affect the life and research of one student?

...sounds very interesting, but surely I'm havily biased.
:-)

Then there's John, who found me through my blog. He's an us-based anthopologist working on "urban life, racial and ethnic identity, and the ethnography of the middle classes in Brazil" but currently he is interested in online communities and software developers.

They've founded a group called the "Media Anthropology Research Circle", which meets neatly with our interests here in Vienna and also overlaps a lot with what the Media-Anthropology-Group of the European Association of Social Anthropologists is up to.

John has started two websites - one is anthroblogs were he's trying to convince anthropologists to blog (was about time someone did that!) and the other one is anthrowiki which " aims to be 1) an academic & anthropological analogue to the wikipedia, 2) a site for special collaborative anthropology projects."

"Both these sites are affiliated with Rob Borofsky's Public Anthropology
organization and conceived as a way broadening and reforming anthropology as a public and engaged discourse."

Reforming anthropology is sth. that is discussed here in Vienna too. One argument is that, if anthroplogists voices would be presented in the media that'd really "change the world". While I agree on part of that, with it comes also this assumption that "we know it better than everyone else", which can be quite problematic.

Anyway: I'm really, really curious about how all these projects develop and you can bet I'll keep an eye on it!

weblog wiki? schtuff?

2005-04-22T12:13:00.000+02:00

Now, speaking to Jan, Lilia and now reading jill's post, her being very excited about a weblog-bibliography I wondered if it would make any sense to set up a collaborative wiki of sorts wich includes all the available research papers on weblogs. Wouldn't that save quite a lot of time and give a good overview? I've been experimenting with schtuff and jotspot and must say schtuff really works well - so: what do y'all think?

incorporated subversion �

2005-04-20T23:24:00.000+02:00

Found that through OLDaily:

incorporated subversion � about: "The name ‘incorporated subversion’ comes from the late David Squires who coined it in his 1999 article ‘Educational Software and Learning: Subversive Use and Volatile Design‘ (.pdf) in which he argued that:

“Designers should consider designing for subversive use, recognising that users fit the use of ICT environments into contextually tuned ‘situated’ learning environments.”

I believe strongly that design in many contexts, be they educational, organisational or commercial, should be facilitative of freedom. Too often we hold back learners, customers and colleagues through unnecessary designed constraints when we could be encouraging expression and exploration through incorporating subversion."

Just what I think. Great.
So the question is: who designs weblog-software? For whose purpose? With what picture of users in his/her mind?

blog-her!

2005-04-19T10:00:00.000+02:00

There's this blogher-conference in July, start reading about it here.
They even have got volunteer blogerships
And Do-ocracy! Here's how it works:

How do you subvert the dominant hierarchy? You give up control. That's one of the things I want to do at BlogHer's July 30 conference. Here's how: Welcome to "The Room of Your Own" a part of BlogHer's conference run by, for and of women attending. Why? Because being audacious enough to suggest we hold this thing, doesn't mean I think I know what you want. So the room of your own is a testament to BlogHer's mission to community-based education and exposure.

Is there something you want to talk about at BlogHer's Conference '05? Do it! Do it here. Tell the community and they'll come. Or help! Starting in the comments section on this post right now [...]

Awesome. I just love the way they go about doing things.

what am I to do?

2005-04-18T23:37:00.000+02:00

there's this conference and it's not any old conference, but the triple A. I really, really want to go there...badly. Why? Because of this:

"Parsing Culture: Cybersocial space and the making of group and individual identity"
National Association of Student Anthropologists Invited Session for the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, 30 Nov-4 Dec 2005

[...] this panel seeks to explore the ways in which "traditional" or paradigmatic anthropological methods and theorizing can be fruitfully applied to these increasingly prevalent online writing and reading practices, as well as the ways in which the communities formed here can complicate traditional theorizing about culture and community.

As "cyberethnographers", how must we adapt anthropological paradigms in order to understand the self-representation practices of hyperliterate subjects? What are the limits of the anthropological gaze in its engagement with weblogging as practice? How can we encourage people to "think more anthropologically" about cyberspaces and weblogging? How do we construct our identity through the use of a variety of social media? [...]

It's just what I'm really interested in, and I'm wondering where to get the money from for the flight...

not so weird...

2005-04-18T22:57:00.000+02:00

the other day I wrote a short post about Radhika Gajjala, now I found more from her: in this issue of Rhizomes.

Rhizomes Manifesto reads as follows:

Rhizomes promotes experimental work located outside current disciplines, work that has no proper location.

As our name suggests, works written in the spirit of Deleuzian approaches are welcomed but not required.

We are not interested in publishing texts that establish their authority merely by affirming what is already believed.

Instead, we encourage migrations into new conceptual territories resulting from unpredictable juxtapositions.

I admit: I'm a gatherer

2005-04-18T20:59:00.001+02:00

I love gathering links, but I'm bad at sorting them. Nevertheless I try to be good at my delicious account and annotate properly. But sometimes - like now - it's just too hard not to blog about stuff (although there's a book waiting for a review and lots of other *important* stuff, that I should do). Ok, I'll stop ranting, here's what I wanted to say: Lots of interesting (note to self: must find another word for that!) conversations are going on: here Marco Kalz compares blogging to an ongoing conference:

Durch das Lesen von Weblogs bindet man sich selbst in eine Expertengemeinschaft ein, in der neue Themen mit einer Geschwindigkeit diskutiert, analysiert und auch wieder verworfen werden, die wahrscheinlich mit einer ständigen Konferenz vergleichbar ist.

Also, he says he thinks it's important to find a space for reflection with no Bloglines, Furl, ICQ or Skype:

Ich bin überzeugt davon, dass man jedoch nur produktiv eine wissenschaftliche Arbeit schreben kann, wenn man sich zumindest für eine Zeit mit seinem Material in ein "stilles Kämmerlein" zurückzieht. Kein Bloglines, kein Furl und am besten auch kein ICQ, Skype oder sonstige Kommunikationsanlässe.

sth, that reminds me of my earlier post about time management and research.

Then there's a discussion on the AOIR-List about information overflow. Leslie Regan Shade wrote a review of the book: "No Time: Stress and the Crisis of Modern Life"

So, for many of us, Menzies's latest book will be an urgent wake-up call to slow down, reflect on our family and work priorities, and talk among ourselves. It's often not until the infrastructure -- whether physical or emotional -- breaks down that we engage in inner contemplation and a renewal of community connections.

I think it's a topic that affects most bloggers I read, and sure does apply to myself too. I wonder if stopping to blog/skype/icq/etc. for a day a week, like mentioned in Jeff Youngs "When to Log Off"would solve that or change anything.

Lars Risan...

2005-04-18T18:58:00.000+02:00

Jill is blogging from Oslo. There she listened to Lars Risan at the network seminar.
The topic reminds me a bit of Cultures open sources.

I guess I'll wait with commenting 'til she finishes the post. Sounds interesting anyway, what Lars is pointing at.

mediaanthropology - first meeting - done!

2005-04-17T12:53:00.000+02:00

so we had our first meeting and it was great. We decided on what we'll read until next time (mainly articles from The anthropology of media and Media Worlds). What I'm looking at now is if we'll use a wiki or a blog to work collaboratively online. I just found out about socialtext and signed up for it, but then I also discovered the costs! I wonder if jotspot will just do the same, or if we should just use a "normal" weblog or "normal" wiki. I'd love to hear suggestions, and also: as socialtext is building on opensource, is there no similar service that is free?

studying up & down...

2005-04-14T11:24:00.000+02:00

[I didn't write this text, Anne Beaulieu did, reference here]

Subjectivity framed via ‘access’

An important approach to objectivity in ethnography focuses on establishing a particular kind of subjectivity of the ethnographer, which establishes her as able to know and speak about her object. This subjectivity can be expressed in ethnographic writing using widespread conventions, such as the use of first-person reporting of experiences. Another widespread convention is that of the arrival story, which sets the place of the ethnographer, the reader and the other (see (Pratt 1987). The ethnographer is the one who has travelled to far away places, unlike the reader who is ‘here’. The ethnographer has witnessed, first hand, the life of the object of study, and has come back to write about it, unlike those who have been the object of the ethnography and have remained ‘there’. A special subject position is thus created for the ethnographer. Hine (Hine 2000) notes that these arrival stories can be found in ethnographies of Internet and points to various examples (Baym 1995; Correll 1995). The issue of access as something exclusively available to the ethnographer may be a fiction that is more difficult to maintain in the context of the internet, if only in the face of the hype that defines the Internet in terms of its universal, unbounded ‘accessibility’[1] (more on this below).

There are also a number of ways in which access is argued to be a truly different issue with regards to the relation of readers, ethnographers and those studied, when the object of study is not set up as remote and far away. When studying scientists and the Internet as I do (or in looking at other science and technology contexts), those being studied usually already have other means of expression in the (scholarly) world than only via the ethnographic report. That is to say that the ethnographer’s account is not the ‘only’ text representing people or activities. Scientists have publications, webpages and media interventions, which may be more accessible or even better known to the reader than the ethnographer’s portrayal. This ‘studying up’[2] can challenge the position of the ethnographer as sole conduit to the exotic. This can lead to games of ‘whodunit’, where the ethnography is read as a roman a cle and the (famous) scientists are identified in various portraits of informants. It can also lead to the ethnographer to a conundrum as to how to use these written texts. It can be difficult to reconcile the conventions of providing anonymity to informants as far as possible, the presence and importance of these texts in the setting, and the academic conventions of providing citations.

Furthermore, the access that readers may have, not only to the people involved, but also to some of the phenomena witnessed, may also be different in the context of the internet. For example, a quotation from a posting to a newsgroup in an article can be quite easily traced using search engines. Given these multiple ways in which ‘access’ may be realized when dealing with mediated objects, the ethnographer as sole and privileged witness may be more difficult to uphold as a subject position and authorial voice.

To summarize, there are two main kinds of strategies relating to this theme. One is human-centered, in which the strategy of objectification then becomes one of recovering intersubjectivity in spite of the internet, of finding the people behind the webpages, or the colourful characters in the MUD. This approach can be quite sensitive to issues of mediated communication, and the agnostic standpoint in these accounts can be productive of interesting insights into the possibility of an internet sociality. Another set of strategies tries to explore, invest and draw benefits from alternative modes of intersubjectivity that can be enacted in internet contexts. The common implication of these strategies of objectifications is therefore a problematisation of the subjects as well as objects of ethnographic knowledge, or of the relations between them.

[1] The effects of such discourse about the radicality of new icts (including the democratic and open character of the Internet and its ability to level differences in ‘access’) are detailed in Steve Woolgar’s ‘five rules of virtuality’ in Woolgar, S. (2002). Virtual Society? Technology, Cyberbole, Reality. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

[2] This term denotes studying the more powerful, rather than those who are down, in relation to the ethnographer. Nader, L. (1972). Up the Anthropologist—Perspectives Gained from Studying Up. Reinventing Anthropology. D. H. Hymes. New York, Pantheon Books: 284-311.

critique of Miller & Slaters' use of a website, supporting their book...by Anne Beaulieu

2005-04-14T11:17:00.000+02:00

…websites

[reference to the paper by Anne Beaulieu this paragraph is from]

Other non-paper based forms of publishing and communication have also been used by ethnographers Miller and Slater (Miller and Slater 2000). The ethnography which led to The Internet: an Ethnographic Approach, is linked to a website. This website aims to support the book: in its paper version, the table of contents and list of plates send readers to the website for illustrations, as does the back cover blurb: “An innovative tie-in with the book’s own website provides copious illustrations.” On this website,[1] one is indeed able to view a slide show of 6 home pages of websites. These are screenshots of websites (effectively, ‘photographs/snapshots of a single screen displaying one page of a website). These screenshots are shown as a ‘slide show’,[2] but are otherwise completely ‘frozen’ in terms of space and time and functionality. The pages cannot be stopped, or clicked upon, or accessed. They function as illustrations, but not as links or connections to a ‘live’ version of the web. This is a surprising decision (to me), given that the technological implementation is not difficult. This representation can be seen as the internet version of freezing one’s object in time, a move that has a long critique[3] in the disciplinary tradition from which Slater and Miller are working. Incidentally, when tracing one of the Miss Trinidad websites mentioned in the analysis, I was led to a soft-porn website. This highlights one of the advantages of using screenshots on a self-controlled website. This provides stability to the object of inquiry, and enables at least part of the object to be seen by readers subsequently, as it existed when visited by the ethnographers.[4]

The website does try to sustain an intersubjective mode in the ‘discussion areas’ that are related to the main page. The discussion areas are structured according to the main themes of the book. These contain a handful of interventions by people who present themselves as readers of the book and/or ethnographers. Also, in the preface of the book, the authors explicitly request that feedback be sent to them directly, via email, and provide their own email addresses, as granted by their institutions. The fact that the website and email addresses are hosted by the institution of one of the authors perhaps further suggests that the authors see their use of the website as scholarly, collegial academic activities, somewhat separate from the field or from formal publishing. These invitations seem directed at communicating with colleagues about the final representation, though perhaps less about the process (i.e. the site appeared shortly before publication, most activity was in the months immediately following the appearance of the book) or about the object. Here, the internet is both a site for intersubjectivity (communication with colleagues) and a site for ‘illustration’ of the internet, fulfilling functions that the book is considered unable to perform.

[1] http://ethnonet.gold.ac.uk/ accessed 14 August 2003.

[2] Note the metaphorical appeals to other media, other representational technologies, to convey these practices.

[3] Among others. see Fabian, J. (1990). Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York, Columbia University Press.

[4] This is itself a complex issue for scholars of the internet. See Koehler, W. (2002). "Web page change and persistence - A four-year longitudinal study." JASIST 53(2): 162-171..

Anne Beaulieu on blogging

2005-04-14T11:11:00.000+02:00

…blogging

[reference] Another tool, the ‘blog’[1] has been used by a number of researchers to constitute various aspects of their ethnographies. The form has been flexibly used, for a range of purposes that traditionally were pursued in different media and which addressed clearly differentiated audiences. For example, two researchers who pursued different projects both found the uses of blogging multiplying:

“The weblogs were originally used as a way to keep our focus while online, serving as constant little reminders of the topics were supposed to write about. They soon developed beyond being digital ethnographer’s journals and into a hybrid between journal, academic publishing, storage space for links and site for academic discourse.“ (Mortensen and Walker 2002)

Their blogs served not only as an annotated set of bookmarks, but also served to document the research process, and demonstrate the way the ethnographer goes about “choosing the items that interest her or that are relevant to her chosen topic, commenting upon them, demonstrating connections between then and analysing them (250)(Mortensen and Walker 2002).” Blogs become a workspace for the ethnographer.

The blog also plays a specific dialogical role for one of the researchers:

“…Torill deliberately used her weblog as an introduction to explain the research to players of games—potential informants—and let them follow the development of the thesis itself. This eliminated some of the mystery and tension related to research, and has on several occasions made it easier to cooperate with online role players: the weblog establishes an accepted online presence which proves that the researcher is real to the digital space and not just a visitor with no knowledge. An [sic] personal online presence legitimates the online researcher much more efficiently than academic affiliation, flesh-world addresses or hone numbers. To skilled online players, it’s easier to fake flesh-world personae than to maintain a consistent long-term online presence.” (Mortensen and Walker 2002, page 2501)

Like many of the other accounts of objectification described in this article, the form of communication and the use of the technology are aligned to the cultural phenomena being investigated (the blog and the phenomena studied “live” in the same sphere). The internet best speaks for itself and is best addressed via the blog, which becomes the ideal instruments for knowing about it. Such alignments are formative moves in the production of knowledge about the internet as object. The researchers argue that the value of the blog is in the exposure, to arguably a wider public, of the process of doing research: the blog’s diversions, asides, and connections show the complexity, creativity and difficulty of the research process. Blogs both help these ethnographers create the object, and make visible the subjectivity of the researcher. The blog is therefore felt to be a context and a mode of communication, a hybrid tool for making, presenting and reflecting on the object that is furthermore exposed in a new way. The alignment of the field and of (some of) the ethnographic writing, however, challenges the practices of leaving the field as the beginning of writing up (Clifford, 1997). The blurring of this boundary may have consequences for ethnographic analysis as well as for field relations, as informants might stay close throughout, and as ‘leaving the field’ will either be reinvented (ending list memberships?) or else ethnography will develop a new mode, with a more ongoing character.

The informality of this mode of writing, researching and communicating has been the object of backlash in some academic circles (though none, as far as I could tell, were ethnographic), and some scholars have reported that their blogging activities were considered too ‘journalistic’ by their peers (Glenn 2003). These protests may be signs of changing values in the wake of novel forms of scientific communication.

[1] Blog is a contraction of ‘web log’, a newish genre of web page that is usually regularly updated, written in a very personal tone and containing many hyperlinks.

more of the same, but differnt this time:

2005-04-14T11:05:00.000+02:00

[just trying to work differently with my blog here...this is not my text, but anne beaulieu- reference here!]

…seeking interaction

Hine’s work on the internet is an important case here (Hine 2000; Hine 2001). This groundbreaking ethnographic work is highly successful in addressing a number of issues in an ethnographic approach to the internet (the notion of site, face to face, interaction, authenticity). In making its object, it relies on a strong humanist notion of the subject as source of intersubjectivity. This investment is especially clear if one compares this work to the stance of cyborg anthropology, which seeks to challenge to human-centred project of anthropology (Downey and Dumit 1997). Hine, for example, does not investigate the search engine in this ethnography. Thus, while she too notes that the web is generally considered to be static, and therefore not interactive and not open to ethnography, she recovers/discovers intersubjectivity on the web by seeking non-institutional pages (as opposed to those produced by media outlets), and focusing on those produced by individuals. The assumption seems to be that these are more likely to lead to interaction with individuals. The ethnography is sustained by the dialogue between clearly interpelated individuals, and an ethnographer who attempts to make herself and her goals as clear as possible. Similarly, Heath and colleagues (Heath, Koch et al. 1999) interact with users, though somewhat more unexpectedly, not having set out to do so from the start, in the way Hine did. In their study of the Human Genome Project, these researchers also interact with a producer of a website, exchanging about their reading and her production of it. They further explicitly distance this approach to ethnographic knowledge from lurking, because of the latter’s lack of engagement with the “subject matter” (page 460)(Heath, Koch et al. 1999).” Like in more conventional fieldwork, knowledge comes from engagement and interaction, always both purposive and incidental.

Intersubjectivity is also an important theme in efforts by some ethnographers to produce a new kind of representation of ethnographic knowledge. These explorations of multi-media ethnography are somewhat different from the other texts considered here, because they mainly challenge the writing tradition of ethnography, rather than the practices of research. In other words, they are part of what Gupta and Ferguson (Gupta and Ferguson 1997) call the literary turn, taking ethnography from ‘thick description’ to ‘writing culture’. This distinction between objectification and representation is a fuzzy one however, and these novels practices in ethnography may come closer in the future, or might not seem so different in a different analytic framework than the one used here. Thus, while these efforts to produce new ethnographies were not explored in detail for this article, it seems worthwhile to mention at least one example of such projects. As part of a project on hypermedia and ethnography at Cardiff University[1], Mason and Dicks try to make room for the reader in the ethnography as representation. They propose a hypertext as conduit for their work: ethnographic hypermedia environment (EHE). The aim is to problematise the ethnographic object by showing some of the construction of the ethnographic representation, and by enabling the reader to navigate through various ethnographic materials. This project also aims to take seriously critiques of authorship and representations in ethnography, by enabling the reader to navigate her own way through (and restructure to some extent) the materials presented in the ethnographic account. Because such projects invest in the ethnographic values of interaction and co-construction, I include this project here under the theme of intersubjectivity.

[1] http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/hyper/p02/index.html

CFP: MASN - Connecting Europe - Transcending Borders"

2005-04-14T10:46:00.000+02:00

Hope this link works, it's a Call for Papers for an anthropology- students-conference here in Vienna.
If not - just go to their yahoogroup and join.

lurking, professionally? :-)

2005-04-14T10:32:00.000+02:00

being naughty again: here's part of a paper by Anne Beaulieu:

Technology: Totalising the Field

In studying the Internet, technology is invested with the ability of achieving something like mechanical objectivity (Daston and Galison 1992), where technology makes it possible for the subject to be removed from the observing context, or at least from some aspects of ethnographic work. Indeed, the idea of the lurker[1] as beneficial or even ideal position for the ethnographer comes up frequently. The ideal of the unobtrusive observer has been heralded in relation to various internet contexts (MOOs, newsgroups). In stronger or weaker version, the position of the lurker has been celebrated for (finally) enabling the gathering of material at the ethnographic level (at the level of specific interactions) without the intrusiveness of the tape recorder or the disturbing physical presence of the observer:

“The Internet does greatly facilitate ‘casing the scene’ prior to creating a strategy for entering into active participation. It is much easier to lurk on the Internet in most cases than to unobtrusively hang out in an Amazon village (Thomsen, Straubhaar et al. 1998, online).”

The technologically mediated setting is one in which ethnographers can be, without revealing themselves as individuals.

Pacagnella argues that in doing research on the Internet, ethnographers can benefit from greater availability and accessibility of unobtrusive techniques:

“It is well known, how, in social sciences as well as in other fields, the phenomena being studied are modified by the very act of observing them.”(Paccagnella 1997, online)

Again, the technological mediation serves as protective barrier between the object and the researcher as subject. Lurking is also presented as protecting the ethnographer from being too awkward and bumbling, and as a (normative) first step in becoming a full-fledged participant (Baym 2000).

The internet as a setting offers ‘peculiar advantages’, namely

“In many cases observations can be carried out even without informing the people being studied. While this obviously urges us to take into consideration new ethical issues…at the same time it reduces the dangers of distorting data and behaviours by the presence of the researcher. “ (Paccagnella 1997, online)

Pacagnella writes from a sociological perspective, where social scientific tendencies to the positivistic may be stronger than in anthropological circles. Another, perhaps more ethnographically-inspired, line of argument for the value of the invisible non-participant observer focuses on the fact that ‘the lurker’ is a socially acceptable position in the setting:

…. an alternative ethical measure would be one in which we concentrate on methods that seem in tune with the world in which we exist rather than seeking to satisfy a set of abstract and possibly theoretically inapplicable ethical codes. Non participation observation is a common occurrence in chat rooms (hence the typical cry, "why isn't anyone talking?"). It fits the local environment better than interviewing or any other method. Perhaps if we adopt local measures of valid action it is the most justified method. (Leaning 1998, online)

Schaap, who studied a MUD intensively for two years, also notes that much of his material was collected by lurking (Schaap 2002). Like Leaning, he also argues that the behaviour is a common one in the MUD environment, and that it provides the ethnographer with the possibility of unobtrusively observing. While I have no reason to doubt that the behaviour is found in the field, the subject position of the ethnographer probably doesn’t quite map on to that of a player—what of the differences in the intentions, motivations, and consequences of lurking? This tension is well illustrated by the experience of researchers who have tried to come out as ethnographers, having lurked for most of their research. Some have found that the setting may not be so accepting of this position (see (Bromseth 2002); the instrumental stance and consequences of ethnographic lurking are problematic to participants, in a way that other forms of ‘lurking’ may not be.

Claims about the possibility of an ideal observer insist on the desirability of placing the ethnographer at one end of the participant observer continuum (Leaning 1998; Paollilo, 1999), to whom all is accessible, without needing to enact a subject position. The relation proposed by mechanical objectivity, may be fragile, however, when the object talks back to an identified subject.

Avoiding interaction may also have consequences for the material gathered by the ethnographer. Several ethnographers (Mason 1996; Leaning 1998; Heath, Koch et al. 1999; Hine 2000) note that the ethnographer may miss out on part of the phenomena, which may not be visible on the ‘observable’, ‘public’ list or on the webpage. Mason illustrates this point with the example that when posting messages to a list, one discovers that off-list responses are also sent out (Mason 1996). Hine insists on the value of participating for checking interpretations, and on the intrinsic usefulness of learning by trying to participate (Hine 2000). These arguments emphasise the value of interaction as part of the ethnographic approach.

[1] A lurker is someone who is part of an activity on the internet, but without making explicit/overt contributions to it. For example, reading a newsgroup, without posting messages to it is considered lurking.

what the heck?

2005-04-13T22:57:00.000+02:00

Have you ever heard about the iraqiblogger-tech-support? It's a website "dedicated to help Iraqis [financially], blogging from within Iraq". Well I hadn't and I was quite surprised when I found out about it (while reading afghan warriors blog). A bit concerning is this post here.

And sth. else: Iraqi mistress. I just must convince some of my anthropologist-friends to study the iraqi weblogsphere!
:-)

thick participation, anyone?

2005-04-13T19:20:00.000+02:00

I had it all there, this lovely post about Lilia, Jan and Alex...and then I made the big mistake: used blogger to post it, well I'm still doing it, anyway: it just vanished somewhere into internet-limbo.
:-(

The upshot was:
Lilia needs help/ideas on thick participation (term by Spittler), which - as I just found out - is derived from Geertz' thick description. Alexander Knorrs page will definitely get lots more visitors (which is great 'cause he's into interesting stuff!), and Jan might be my second supervisor as well as holding a talk at my Uni. We had a great evening yesterday.

So what do I know about "thick participation"? Well that's what I could find on the net:

Der Terminus "Dichte Teilnahme" wurde von dem Ethnologen Gerd Spittler – in
Anlehnung an Clifford Geertz' Terminus der "Dichten Beschreibung" – geprägt. Er fokussiert den Aspekt der zeitintensiven Teilhabe, des Miterlebens und einer wenig vorstrukturierten, kontinuierlichen Kommunikation. Dies ermöglicht die Erfassung nonverbaler Aspekte religiöser Erfahrungen und Botschaften. [source]

More information here: 2001 Teilnehmende Beobachtung als Dichte Teilnahme, in : Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 126 (1), S. 1-25

Also found an interview with Gerd Spittler, where the term's mentioned.

Virtual Ethnography Revisited

2005-04-13T19:09:00.000+02:00

Warning: this is not some text I wrote,

but it's by Christine Hine, the original is here.
[just trying to use my blog again for summary and work on a talk on virtual ethnography and blogs I'll give on Saturday]

Virtual Ethnography Revisited

Christine Hine

Department of Sociology

University of Surrey

Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK

c.hine@surrey.ac.uk

http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/christine_hine.htm

Paper summary prepared for session on Online Research Methods, Research Methods Festival, Oxford, July 1^st 2004

In this presentation I will outline the main components of the approach that I call virtual ethnography, talk about some ways in which this approach can be used as a component in a broad range of social research projects and describe some practical steps that researchers can take for effective research engagement.

The idea of virtual ethnography was to find a way of taking seriously, as a sociological phenomenon, the kinds of things people did on the Internet. At the same time, the challenge was not to assume that simply by looking at what happened online we could get the full picture of why it might be socially significant or meaningful. The principles that evolved from my initial virtual ethnography of a media event were:

1. We can use ethnography to investigate the ways in which use of the Internet becomes socially meaningful.

2. Interactive media such as the Internet can be understood as both culture and cultural artefact.

3. The ethnography of mediated interaction often asks researchers to be mobile both virtually and physically.

4. Instead of going to particular field sites, virtual ethnography follows field connections.

5. Boundaries, especially between the “virtual” and the “real”, are not to be taken-for-granted.

6. Virtual ethnography is a process of intermittent engagement, rather than long term immersion.

7. Virtual ethnography is necessarily partial. Our accounts can be based on strategic relevance to particular research questions rather than faithful representations of objective realities.

8. Intensive engagement with mediated interaction adds an important reflexive dimension to ethnography.

9. This is ethnography of, in and through the virtual – we learn about the Internet by immersing ourselves in it and conducting our ethnography using it, as well as talking with people about it, watching them use it and seeing it manifest in other social settings.

10. Virtual ethnography is, ultimately, an adaptive ethnography which sets out to suit itself to the conditions in which it finds itself.

The broader context of these principles is an interest in ethnography as a way of understanding social life as lived and experienced. In ethnography, we can use our sensitivity about how amenable [means: accessable A.H.] settings are to particular research approaches as a way of learning about those settings. Making a choice about appropriate communication media is a way of exploring the varying textures of social life as enacted through different media. This means that I do not think of virtual ethnography as confined to projects that want to understand the use of the Internet as their primary goal. As the Internet becomes more and more embedded into everyday life, social research will have to come to terms with it in order to achieve its goals of effectively researching and portraying everyday life. If the people you study move some aspects of their life onto the Internet, then so must you.

In recent research I have been exploring uses of information and communications technologies in contemporary scientific research, in particular the discipline of biological taxonomy or systematics. Some particular thoughts that arise from this research are:

The importance of developing appropriate researcher presence. In a context where the people you are researching have their own web sites, you need one too. [sidenote: yes, very true and sometimes sad that some people haven’t discovered that yet.] It is becoming routine for potential interviewees contacted by email to check out researchers – if you do not offer a link to your home page, then they may well use Google to look for you. Not having online presence can create suspicion, and also mean that you miss out on a chance to deepen discussion of your research.

The limitations of covert ethnography – negotiating consent is about more than just ethical duty. It is easy to do covert research in many kinds of Internet setting. Particularly prominent are mailing lists and newsgroups, where researchers can collect data without telling anyone what they are doing. The ethics of this practice are hotly debated. I have found that contacting people to ask for permission to quote their words is much more than simply a chore undertaken to satisfy ethical demands. It can be a very valuable route to an enhanced research experience. Making the kind of direct contact that asking permission requires means that you learn more about the contexts in which the words we see online are produced and consumed.

The importance of participating in and understanding a communication ecology. It is a mistake to think that particular technologies or communications media necessarily map on to socially meaningful research questions. Instead of setting out to research a particular medium it is often helpful to learn something about the various choices of medium available to the people who are at the heart of the research project, and aim to participate in appropriate ways within that existing ecology.

Links to resources

Association of Internet Researchers – http://www.aoir.org – includes link to the Association’s ethical guidelines, giving questions that researchers should address before designing research using data collected via the Internet

Virtual Methods – http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/virtualmethods/vmesrc.htm - site based on ESRC seminar series, containing archive of presentations with thematic index, list of useful resources, and advice on good practice in virtual methods.

all weird and wonderful...

2005-04-12T11:40:00.000+02:00

that's my conclusion after flicking through a few pages by and with Cyberdiva.
Oh yes, Fay Ginsburg - that's what I actually was looking for, when I found Cyberdiva. Well, an article by Fay Ginsburg (David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology at New York University) is here.

what would you read/do if you had the time?

2005-04-11T09:52:00.000+02:00

At antropologi.info I found a Book Review of the Anthroplogy of Media & Media Worlds. I've got the former, standing on my shelf, sometimes flicking through it, but haven't read it thoroughly. On friday this week though I'll meet a few fellow student to start a focus group for the anthropology of media. We've been discussing possible areas of interest and our imagination of what funny/crazy/intersting stuff we could do (like producing a CD, discuss articles, publish online, write a collaborative wiki etc.). So what are your ideas concering this? Any must-read texts that are a bit "out of the box"? Anything we should definitely not miss?

time management & research...

2005-04-10T18:49:00.000+02:00

I've been reading a nice little book on time managment recently. One paragraph in there refers to bears as examples, and one of the examples points at claiming/planning enough time for a new project to develop/ripen.

Schaffen Sie sich zeitliche Schutzräume, "Zeithöhlen", in denen Sie nicht von dringenden Aufgaben gehetzt werden, sondern einmal mit innerer Ruhe über ihre Zukunft nachdenknen können. [translates roughly as: "create protected time-pockets "time-cavities" in which you're not hounded by urgent tasks but can think about your future peacefully"]

So this got me thinking about a project I've been watching recently, that is Alexander Knorr's blog and webpage. He's got all his fieldnotes online, the whole writing process happens online etc.

He describes this as follows:

The project is 'open research' in several dimensions. My website and weblog simultaneously serve multiple purposes: they are my notebook, writing desk and multimedia online filing system, they maintain world/webwide communication about the ongoing project with fellow scientists, they present my project to a wider public, and -- above all -- both constitute a part of the communication and interaction with the members of "my cyberian tribe". Website and weblog accompanying the project constitute a fusion between spheres, which normally are well seperated in anthropological research: field-data, informal scientific discussion, public-relations work, and a part of the field itself. This diverse groups have access to the same dynamic and interactive material, which contains some risks: What appears perfectly sound to e.g. a game-modder may seem awkward to a scientist and vice versa. My reputation in the modding-community as well as in the scientific community may be at stake -- a fellow-modder jokingly already named me "teh intellectuale" (int. missp. for "THE Intellectual").

I wonder how this shapes his research, how he's influenced by it - and also how he's seen by other scholars doing stuff like that. I can't hide it: I'm fascinated, but also I wonder if we don't really need these "time-pockets" at all...

going native in cyberspace

2005-04-10T01:59:00.000+02:00

It's just come up several times in the last few days that people experience me as a geek.
Help! I don't wanna be a geek! Maybe it's just me going native, but it's weird to experience it too. To see others who can't relate to my experience. The question is really: how native shall an anthropologist be and how deep shall one delve into another "culture"?

Something else is the validity of my research. Do anthropologists still only do research about people in third world countries? Why is that kind of research more justified than any other? Don't we have to understand ourselves better to be able to understand "the other"?

discussion of research design

2005-04-09T21:21:00.000+02:00

Last thursday I discussed my research design at uni. It was an interesting and heated discussion, which made quite a difference to me in my approach. Also I'm still thinking about it, so more about changes later.

Just now I spoke to a friend about the same topic. We really got into deep discussion - especially about the possibility of online-research, or virtual ethnography. She argued, that it is very important to at least the meet people, that I do my research about. Stuff like non-verbal communication, the context people live in, their friends, way of life, social status,... is only visible this way - which is of course very true. So the problem is that one can write about anything in a blog, and it doesn't have to be true. I (and this is now her example) could be given the sack and actually write about my promotion. This reminds me of someone making up a blogger, a young girl who then died of leukemia - but actually never existed. (Any hints who this was and what happened?)

So why do people really blog? Is it, that they haven't got any friends? Is this their way of forming social contacts? Is this the sign of an ever lonlier world? What happenes when people meet online, form relations online? What's the context bloggers live in?

The whole thing boils down to the difference between what people say and what people do, really, I guess. And I know Christine Hine also writes about it, somewhere. Just have to find out where.
:-)
Another question that was brought up in our discussion is writing across cultural boundaries. What happens when people communicate across cultural differences? Does it make a difference at all?

And finally: What happens if the outcome of my research is, that blogs are just the way of scientific writing, of scientific discourse? What happenes to the scientist from the south? What if she's only got internet access once a week? And what if she's really an expert in a field of heated debate, but just can't contribute?

This question is a rather political one, I think. Do I promote anything with my research, and if so: what?

FLOSS? dental floss?

2005-04-09T19:01:00.000+02:00

Through Dragonfly: I found a paper by Yuwei Lin. It's about the Gender & FLOSS.
So you don't really know what FLOSS means? Same here.
:-)
Something about Open Source or Open Publishing - something along this lines, was my first idea. And actually it's not too far away from what I thought. Here's the abstract:

The FLOSS development is responding to the ICT development in various ways. This essay describes and analyses challenges (societal and organisational) and advantages (e.g. new models for mobile and collaborative work online), particularly regarding gender issues, encountered in the recent FLOSS development. The focus of the essay is not only on the claims made by women in the existed FLOSS community about the tensions between male and female developers' interests and ways of doings, but also on the current obstacles against bringing more women, who are not technically competent, to participate in the FLOSS development. This paper concludes with suggestions on how to create rules and resources and the creation of a common FLOSS space for both genders.

Oh, and you should go and have a look at Maja van der Velden. Very interesting Website and research blog. Here's her proposal. (Local knowledges in global communication: The impact of information and communication technology on the diversity of human knowledge)

anthropology in scandinavia & france, racial matters too

2005-04-09T18:32:00.000+02:00

I've been reading a bit this afternoon, and I started a web search, comparing french and skandinavian anthropology in google. Yes, I know about the google-problems-stuff but: it's the most widely used search engine. To be there is to exist.

The first hit when looking for france and anthropology through google is an interesting one:
it's about the history of race in science, to be precise: there's a bibliography that one finds, but my link points to the main page. Here's a short intro to the site:

"The RaceSci Website is a resource for scholars and students interested in the history of "race" in science, medicine, and technology. RaceSci is dedicated to encouraging critical, anti-racist and interdisciplinary approaches to our understanding of the production and uses of "race" as a concept within the history of science."

Than one finds a wikipedia-link to anthropology in france, which is quite useful in my opinion.

If searching for norway & anthropology, on of the first sites is an overview and links to universities and societies concerned with anthropology. Quite useful.

Then there's an article by Finn Sivert Nielsen about Anthropology in Norway, and just after that a link to the department of Anthropology at the University of Oslo.

The reason behind my search was really to find out, if "the big guys" are represented in the Net...and if so, how. I would have thought to get stuff like Thomas Hylland Eriksens' Website as one of the first hits, but it seems that one has too look for it differently.

Oh, and I found another anthropology-related blog: Dienekes'
(6th hit for anthropology & sweden, seems to be about physical anthropology)

Contentious blogs about why she blogs...

2005-04-09T11:02:00.000+02:00

and here goes another one about why someone blogs: Blogging as Exploration:
CONTENTIOUS allows me to think things through, and to connect and learn, in public. It helps me evolve my perspective. As a byproduct I believe it helps establish my credibility – even though I sometimes say things here I later change my mind about or regret. But for me, the most compelling benefit is that it allows me to open my mind and share with people who have related interests and diverse perspectives.

blogwalk in austria!

2005-04-08T22:56:00.000+02:00

from what I gathered here and there there'll quite likely be a blogwalk in Austria! And the best is: it's going to be shortly before my birthday...what a present!
So for all the people who are new to blogs and don't know what a blogwalk is, and why the heck I'm so excited about it, here's a definition:
BlogWalk is a series of face-to-face meetings aimed to bring together weblog researchers and practitioners for in-depth conversations about their work, possible trends, and visions. The format we strive for is an intellectual Salon where minds can meet and inspire each other in direct conversation.[found it here]

academic blogging

2005-04-08T16:19:00.000+02:00

Henry Farrell wrote an interesting post at Crooked Timber, about why he as an academic, took up blogging.

My personal motivation for taking up blogging was to get into arguments about all of the things that I can’t really write about as a political scientist – science fiction, modern literature, curious historical facts – and to express strong and non-scientific opinions on politics. I used to joke that I wanted to be Susan Sontag when I grew up; someone who wrote fiercely argued and dense essays for the New York Review of Books. Blogging isn’t that, but it does give license to write in a freewheeling way, to speculate, to polemicize and to give a bit of free rein to your hobby-horses. All of which is to say that blogging isn’t ever going to be a substitute for academia, but it is a valuable ancillary activity. It allows you to write pieces that may or may not connect to your scholarship, but that never could see the light of day in an academic journal.