However, I have doubts about doing yet another book on ‘poverty in Africa.’ Just as anthropologists fill the ‘savage slots’ in joint social studies departments (as I do in mine), Africa seems to fill the ‘poverty slot,’ and I’d like to avoid that.

And perhaps I should be taping the ER episodes! It would might be fun to analyze the ways in which political/economic disasters are portrayed in popular American media.

Well, as it just so happens, I’m using a case study in my Intro class that deals with refugees from the Sudan in the US! The title is “Nuer Journeys, Nuer Lives” by Jon Holtzman, and while I haven’t finished it yet (it’s assigned to be finished by the week after Thanksgiving, with discussion starting next week) what I’ve read has been pretty well-written and engaging. The students who have commented on it have been impressed with the resilience and fortitude of these refugees — which bodes well for the coming discussion of globalization and migration of labor. I think the fact that ER has had a running series of episodes on Sudan may have softened them up to be open to more understanding of these particular people’s lives, too. And of course, the fact that the book focuses on Nuer refugees ties it into a whole history of important anthropological work, meaning that the textbook and my lectures have consistently offered examples from “traditional” Nuer life against which the case study stands as a kind of counter-point.

I had already decided on “Hard Times on Kairiru Island.” I think that the linking of poverty and moral failing will speak to my students, who are predominantly African-American and working or lower middle class.

I want something on the Middle East, due to current politics and because so many of my students have been in the military, will be in the military, or have children in the military. I’d love to try Veiled Sentiments as an exercise in a very ‘literary’ form of ethnography, but fear it will be too dense for my students; Guests of the Sheik seems to be more accessible as well as relevant.

But for a more global and/or industrial world ethnography I actually wanted to focus on refugees from the Sudan in the U.S. This would allow me to address transformations of ethnography (British structural-functionalism –> global transmigration), what’s going on in the Sudan today, and issues of race in the U.S. as ‘black’ migrants enter the U.S. racial system.

Any suggestions?

I’ve only looked briefly at White People Will Eat You. It’s on Ialibu right? By Wormsely, or whatever his name is? I know him because he also did some consultancy work for the government in Enga, the province next door to S. Highlands, where I think it takes place. I’ve not read it — although ‘some of my best friends are from Ialibu’.

You know there are other ‘literary’ ethnographies which are a bit long but also readable:
Return to Laughter (Tiv, 50s)
Play Money (or even My Tiny Life — Internet, 00s) — Dibbell talks a lot about Weber and capitalism in this book.
Beamtimes and Lifetimes (not literary but short and a good example that anthro can be about ‘us’) etc. etc.

On PNG — it’s not that I’m looking for “primitive” per se, and in fact I’m more interested in something that deals with globalization and even, if I may, neoliberalism (!!!!). The Bodley book follows a roughly evolutionary schema, moving from Australian foragers to American capitalists (though Bodley is a sharp critic of the impact of globalization on indigenous cultures, so I can’t imagine any of it will be presented as “pristine, original peoples”) and I’d like to have a book each month. So my “foragers or So Pac horticulturalists” is meant to be something to assign at the beginning of the class, during that first month when we’ll be talking about Australian aborigines and Plains Indians and the Yanomamo and so on.

By the way, what do you think of “White People Will Eat You”? (Don’t think we won’t!)

Carmen — thanks! I’ve been avoiding European cultures, mostly because it’s not an area I know particularly well, but I’ll have a look at that one.

This semester I’ve also taught Namoluk Beyond The Reef, which is about the Micronesian diaspora. Very true to life in the Pacific today, short, and well written. Students liked it. But it’s about globalization, so if you are looking for “Pacific -primitives- horticulturalists” it isn’t for you.

I had a similar slot in my syllabus and I taught:
Madumo (an SM rec — well received by me and my class)
Village on the Edge (actually THIS is the ideal ethnography of contemporary PNG)
Wisdom Sits In Places

hth. On second thought I higly recommend Village On The Edge.