Social Anthropology Playlist

Michael Herzfeld, at Harvard University, has put his syllabus for Introduction to Social Anthropology online as an H2O Playlist.

What is an H2O playlist? Here is how H2O (a project of the Berkman Center) describes it:

H2O playlists are more than just a cool, sleek technology — they represent a new way of thinking about education online. An H2O Playlist is a series of links to books, articles, and other materials that collectively explore an idea or set the stage for a course, discussion, or current event.

H2O Playlists make it easy to:

• transform traditional syllabi into interactive, global learning tools
• share the reading lists of world-renowned scholars, organizations, and cultural leaders
• let interested people subscribe to playlist updates and stay current on their fields
• promote an exchange of ideas and expertise among professors, students, and researchers
• communicate and aggregate knowledge — online and offline.

So, go on … check out existing playlists or create your own. You can also read our philosophy behind building this technology.

Sort of like a wiki or CiteULike, but somehow different. I’ll have to play with it some more before figuring out if it is truly “not suck,” but if it is easier for people to use than CiteULike and wikis it could be a good thing.

Found via Phil Bradley’s amazing “I want to …” list, which I discovered via Ishbaddidle.

UPDATE: Very strange, there doesn’t seem to be any interface to import/export from standard bibliographic formats. So, thumbs down for now. But it is still in beta so hopefully this is on their list of things to add before the final release.

P. Kerim Friedman is an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures at National Dong Hwa University, in Taiwan, where he teaches linguistic and visual anthropology. He is co-director of the film Please Don't Beat Me, Sir!, winner of the 2011 Jean Rouch Award from the Society of Visual Anthropology. Follow Kerim on Twitter.