Around the Web

Science shit-storm

  • Full coverage of the wording of the AAA mission statement and the place of “science” in anthropology can be found at Neuroanthropology where Daniel Lende has collected fifteen links (and growing) on the subject alongside his own opinions. He’s been doing a good job of updating the link list as more blogs respond to the AAA’s actions, so if its been a while since you checked his page check again.

Don’t forget the ethics code!

  • While a lot of blogging energy has gone into the “science” kerfluffle, comparatively little posting has been done on the revision of the ethics code outside of the AAA’s own blog. Inside Higher Ed, while leading with a ridiculous example, did at least muster some coverage of this important issue.

Teaching ethnography

  • If you’re an adjunct like me you might be pigeonholed into a limited repetoir of textbook focused intro courses in a sociology department. I’d like to get my students reading more about other cultures rather than just giving them what Haviland or Kottak say culture is. This means getting them to read ethnography, something they don’t already know how to do. Here’s some helpful tips I found on teaching reading.

Whither the future of citations?

  • Ethnografix blogs here on the perception by some that citing sources is a rather stuffy, old fashioned practice. It seems that at least once a year I bust a student for plagiarism and its been argued that young people, schooled in the conventions of sampling, pop culture references, and mash-up culture, experience a kind of cognitive dissonance at the very notion of giving proper credit. As the recent Cook’s Source row has shown, even some more mature writers see the contemporary internet scene as an environment where anything goes.

Republicans have feelings too

  • In this short essay, an anonymous author and self described conservative cynically recounts his attempt to improve his teaching evaluations when his liberal colleagues conspire to fire him after tenure based on the scores. There’s a lot of moving parts here and the author seems to relish being an asshole, but the upshot of the whole thing is a purported direct relationship between grade inflation and evaluation inflation. There’s probably some truth to that.

Ain’t got nothin’ but love, babe

  • Who couldn’t use an extra day in the week? It always seems that I don’t have the time to get done what I need to get done, but then I’m like the opposite of a Type A personality. Prof. Hacker, in this review of “168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think,” suggests you can find the time to get things done by keeping a time diary. So, in the interest of efficiency you might just read the review instead of the book.

Can adjuncts move up?

  • Academia has the distinction of being a field where starting at the bottom, working hard, doing a good job, and being a amiable colleague will get you nowhere. Does a part-timer have a better chance over the competition to move up to a full-time position at the same school? Not necessarily, writes Dean Dad.

On making it outside academe

  • Susan Basalla May, co-author of “So what are you going to do with that?” a quite helpful book on leaving the academy, interviewed anthropologist John Fox on his zigzagging career path. Fox, “Much as I’d like to pretend it’s been the unfolding of some great master plan, the truth is, it’s come about through a combination of pursuing interests, seizing opportunities, and being pragmatic about making a living.”
  • Another Chronicle piece on anthropologists, focusing on the changes nonacademic professionals are bringing to the AAA. This one’s behind the pay wall so if you don’t subscribe you’ll have to go through your library’s website.

For profits

  • We’ve been kicking the for profit schools around quite a bit here on Around the Web. Muckraker and gossipmonger blog Gawker finds that even though these schools have been accused of fraud, subjected to increased scrutiny from the Feds, and might lose their access to federal loan programs if Obama has his way, the National Security Administration still gives its employees paid time off to attend them.

Timewaster

Seen something around the web you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community? Email your links to mdthomps AT odu.edu.

Matt Thompson

Matt Thompson is Project Cataloger at The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, and currently working on a CLIR ‘hidden collections’ grant to describe the museum’s collection of early 20th Century photography. He has a doctorate in anthropology from the University of North Carolina and a Masters in information science from the University of Tennessee.

2 thoughts on “Around the Web

  1. “There’s a lot of moving parts here and the author seems to relish being an asshole, but the upshot of the whole thing is a purported direct relationship between grade inflation and evaluation inflation.”

    How are you defining “asshole?” If thinking your good at what you do is being an asshole, then we’re probably all assholes, or are you saying that political conservative = asshole?

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