Anthropology on your iPod
Owning a large dog who needs exercise, I find myself spending a lot of time going for walks, and so I’m always looking for good podcasts and audiobooks I can listen to. Unfortunately, there aren’t many anthropology choices out there. There are some conference and lecture podcasts, such as the SFAA podcasts, but almost no radio shows. Certainly nothing like Radio Lab or On The Media, my two favorite podcasts. Recently, however, I did discover one decent radio show which frequently interviews anthropologists: the BBC’s Thinking Allowed. For instance this recent episode discussed both biometric security (including its colonial roots), as well as ethical issues in medical ethnography.
On a related note, while they don’t have any other anthropology interviews, this episode of the UC Press Podcast contains an interview with Savage Minds occasional blogger Jonathan Marks about his new book Why I am Not a Scientist: Anthropology and Modern Knowledge.
Anyone know of any other anthropology related podcasts, radio shows, or audiobooks?
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.
You can add “In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/ and “Forum,”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/2009/03/000000_forum.shtml both from the BBC.
AAA also has a podcast “series”:http://aaanet.org/issues/AAA-Podcast-Series.cfm
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Just listened to the SFAA podcast linked here. Very interesting papers, but am troubled by Robert Rubenstein’s paper on “retrospective attribution” and his verbal attacks on anthropologists with any criticism of military anthropology uses the exact same sort of totalizing just-so story that he accuses his anti-military anthropologists of using. His resistance to including critiques of Human Terrain says a lot. Rubenstein’s crude attacks on Max Forte, Gustav Houtman, Gerald Sider and Jeremy Keenan seem based on his own pro military bias and his students’ ties to the military, not on scholarship. He is making up history when he claims no anthropologist were involved in Camelot. Calling his critics ‘violence anthropologists’ undercuts his ability to criticize Sider for raising concerns about military anthropologists being war criminals.
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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation used to have a great hour-long documentary program called Radio Eye.
They’ve since moved to a new format, which I can’t speak to in any way whatsoever at all. The old installments are still listen-able on the website:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/radioeye/
The material is mostly quite good.
The “Return to Arnhem Land” episode from January addresses the repatriation of some turn-of-the-century field recordings to an aboriginal group. The story is reasonably complex for a popular national radio show.
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Not really anthropology-specific but:
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/podcast.html
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Potlatch: I’m going to listen to that – I know Rubinstein a little, it will be interesting to hear what he has to say (although I suspect I’d fall into the camp of anthros he’s criticizing). What I really wanted to say is that, as far as I remember, *technically* no anthropologists were involved in Project Camelot because, as I recall, the Project was canceled before it actually did anything. It’s likely, of course, that had the Project not gotten exposed before its full launch, and had it not gotten the criticism it got, that anthros would have participated.
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Apologies for the self promotion but I just started an ethnography podcast I call it “Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast” (or RIEP).
The first episode is mostly about what I intend to do with the podcast and about my own sorry self.
http://blog.informalethnographer.com/2009/05/11/riep1-inaugural-episode/
Future episodes will be themed. I’m thinking about doing the next one on “establishing rapport.”
If anyone is interested in participating, I’m certainly open to suggestions.
As you might guess, I’m not trying to take anyone’s place. I just felt that there was something missing, in terms of anthro-related podcasts.
BTW, Chris Lydon’s *Open Source* makes frequent mentions of ethnography. (Not putting the link so I don’t trigger filtering.)
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The Association for Political and Legal Anthropology is (slowly) preparing for the launch of a podcast series. Thus far they’ve posted the abstracts of their (planned?) first casts, and a link to external resources and anthro related podcasts that they’ve compiled. Go APLA!!
http://www.aaanet.org/sections/apla/externalresources.html
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Hey,
If you open up iTunes and go to the iTunes Store, you can find several podcasts. Simply search for “Anthropology.” The results will give a number of music artists; however, you will see a section for “Podcasts.” Click the “See all” button. Also, there are some universities that put lectures on iTunes. They will show up in the search results. I got curious after reading this entry, so I tried it out. Best of luck!
John
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