I thought I’d post this to underscore Kerim’s “earlier post”:/2006/10/04/reality-check/ and just to serve as a quick reality check after the “Burning Man thread”:/2006/09/27/notes-towards-an-anthropology-of-burning-man/:
Q: Are the people on this blog Real Anthropologists?
A: Yes. By any standard, the contributors to this blog are Real Anthropologists — we all have graduate degrees in anthropology from presitguous and well known universities. We teach at prestigious and well-known universities in four countries. Some Minds are senior scholars. Some are still finishing their Ph.Ds. Most are in between. We are Certified 100% Real Anthropologists. If you haven’t managed to notice this it is your fault, not ours — trust me.
Q: Do you do anthropology on Savage Minds?
A: No. We talk about doing anthropology on Savage Minds. This is just a blog. It is not our careers or our work. See Kerim’s post immediately below this one. This is not the digital equivalent of an AAA session, it is the digital equivalent of the AAA hotel bar after sessions are over for the day.
Q: What counts as ‘being an anthropologist’?
A: Viewed from the ‘outside’, it is not hard to describe ‘ethnographically’ what an anthropologist is — there are a myriad of formal and informal institutions, international and otherwise, that stabilize the discipline of anthropology (see question #1). Viewed from the ‘inside’ in terms of what anthropology should be ‘anthropology’ (to me) means the social science that takes as its object the phenomenon of culture — a sui generis, domain of arbitrary and conventional meaning that is distinctly human. Some anthropologists take issue with the ‘science’ part of that defintion. Some would replace ‘culture’ with ‘society’. Some study how culture interdigitates with our biological constitution as a species, while others focus on the artifacts created by people in the course of their construing their lives as meaningful.
There are, of course, a bunch of other things that people typically think of as ‘anthropological’ which I think are typically associated with anthropology but which are not essential to the discipline. These include the method of research known as ‘participant observation’, a focus on ‘primitive’ people, and a certain populist sensibility. You’ll get a lot of all of that stuff if you hang around here but, like the knife you see on TV that can cut through an aluminum can and still slice tomatos, it is merely a bonus to the all the other fantastic features that come for free with our site.
Some of us readers are cultural sociologists. Hope that’s okay.
Welcome, cousin.
Well this is exactly the point about this being a lounge rather than a scholarly session — we invite all and sundry :!)
Did anyone else notice, by the way, the following from Grant McCracken’s This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics,
The entry, titled “Ethnography and the ‘Extra Data’ Opportunity” starts with these words.
Say, who pays for the hosting, anyway? It’s fine if you think filthy lucre is not an appropriate subject for this dinner table, but I just realized I have no idea of the mechanics behind this blog. Where is Savage Minds hosted? And who did the designing?
Kerim created the layout by tweaking a popular WordPress theme (check the footer of this page for more detail). The site is hosted on a communally-maintained box at http://www.communitycolo.net/ to which I donate — and you should to!
“Say, who pays for the hosting, anyway? It’s fine if you think filthy lucre is not an appropriate subject for this dinner table, but I just realized I have no idea of the mechanics behind this blog.”
Rex answered the other questions but neglected to mention how this site is financed. As you know, anthropologists develop a wide variety of contacts in remote locations around the world. This has allowed us to build a quite lucrative trade in black market body parts, the sale of which covers hosting, small honoraria for myself and the other writers, and of course, winter homes in the Cayman Islands (well, Kelty has a yacht). I suppose this would bother some people — I mean after all, third world children need organs too — but as we all know postmodernism lets us ignore the moral ramifications of this line of work.
Sure, you can call it “filthy lucre”, but I call it post-capitalist resistance to the dominant economic narratives which structure Western ethico-financial relations. And it’s good.
We don’t ask our readers to subsidize the blog, but we do ask that you consider giving money to the current charity of choice. I’m happy to see that one of the three projects we are now funding (the “Harlem Book Club”) was fully funded. Unfortunately, Savage Mind readers can hardly take credit for that …
Actually, if you donate enough, you can have your donated organs transplanted *on* my yacht.
FAQ #4 Are any of SavageMinds regular contributors tenured professors of anthropology?
I see, so it was pretty much what I suspected all along, except I thought you all lived in your cars and donated your bodily fluids for a living.
Q: Are any of the Savage Minds regular contributors tenured professors of anthropology?
A: I have no idea. You’d have to ask them. I believe a few are. The three most active contributors — Kerim, Oneman, and Myself — most definitely are not.
“the phenomenon of culture—a sui generis, domain of arbitrary and conventional meaning that is distinctly human.”
Aha–so it’s really just Cultural Studies after all!
Or maybe Linguistics, minus the languages…
“Presitguous” mitigates the tone somewhat.
Yeah. We like to show our unbuttoned “first draft” sides on the blog 😉
“Aha—so it’s really just Cultural Studies after all!”
*smile
Actually there ARE more cultural studies types in anthropology than do confess to be.