All posts by jay sosa

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Research Blogging. 2.0. Cognitive Daily announced the new, updated version of ResearchBlogging.org. Although the Anthropology section sill appears woefully underused, the new 2.0 version comes with all the features (rss feeds, labels, tagging) to which we have become accustomed.

The University of Capetown awarded a posthumous doctorate to Archie Mafeje. A Black South African who was educated at UCT before apartheid, and who obtained a doctorate in anthropology Cambridge, Mafeje was offered and later denied a post at UCT in 1968, at the height of apartheid. The BBC reports more on the long story.

Looking for Trouble: William O. Beeman wrote an opinion piece for the the Minnesota Star Tribune on two resolutions circulating the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, asking George W. Bush to take strong measures, including a possible blockade, against Iran.

The AAA Human Rights Blog linked to a Newsweek article, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Do Kill,” about thepersecution of gay Iraqi men (no women?) by militia men. The Newsweek article concludes:

Persecution of gays will stop only if Iraqis can abandon centuries-old prejudices. They would have to acknowledge that human rights don’t cover only the humans they like. Insisting that gays are just a few undesirable perverts who “should be killed”-as one Iraqi who works in journalism put it-encourages an atmosphere of impunity no matter the offense. Killing gays becomes “honorable.”

The AAA blog asks what anthropologists can do to improve the situation of gays in Iraq? Perhaps one might begin by looking for more nuanced explanations of homophobia then attributing all oppression to an outmoded religious prejudice.

Gender Under Construction: Haidy L Geismar at Material World linked to the official launch of the new database website, Gendersite: Gender and the Built Environment. According to Geismar, “Gendersite aims to transfer the research findings of academics and others to built environment practitioners so that the design and management of our towns, cities, buildings and open spaces will better incorporate the specific needs of women.”

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Tony Orlando and Darwin:  The New York Times reviewed musicologist Daniel J. Levitin’s new book The World in Six Songs.  The mostly positive review takes Levitin to task for “some strange claims” Levitin makes regarding music’s role in human evolution, such as music’s role in mate selection. 

Forbes Ultimate Spring Break Guide:  I enjoyed reading this diatribe of Forbes rankings of American colleges.  The most strident criticism (and justly so) is the consideration Forbes gave towards student evaluations on Rate My Professor, the MTV-owned website where students separate the totally awesome professors from the ones that suck. The author, Patricia McGuire, also makes a good ethnographic observation about the U.S. as of late:

We Americans love our lists, and in the right perspective the list-making game can be much fun —- the AFI top 100 movies of all time; Kasey Kasem’s American Top 40; our favorite snack foods.

HTS Annotated Bibliography:  L.L. Wynn and her student, Nikki Kuper, put together a pretty comprehensive list of resources on HTS and Minerva on Culture Matters. 

Tie one more onto the Sacred Bundle:  The blog Neuroanthropology is celebrating the first PhD in the subdiscipline of the same name. 

Reviving the Past:  Religious activists in Athens gathered at the Parthenon worshipping in protest of the new museum that will be built at the foot of the Acropolis.  The group claims to have performed the first cere mony at the Parthenon celebrating the Greek gods since ancient times.  (The New York Times  and AP reported on this.)

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Something Else to Say About the Olympics:  Slate published a very good piece on a dark chapter of Olympic and anthropological history.  The 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, which ran concurrently with the World’s Fair, also hosted a “Special Olympics,” which featured ‘savages’ from the anthropology exhibit competing in parallel sporting events.  Nevertheless,

“The Special Olympics were harder to pull together than they expected. Despite the fact that the folks in the human zoo were in quasi-captivity, they were paid professionals. With agents and everything. Very few of the “primitives” had any interest in participating in an amateur competition.” 

In an interesting combination of queer rights and indigenous sovereignty, the Coquille Nation in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. has legalized same-sex marriage (and presumably the marriage of two-spirit identified individuals?).  The right to marry will extend to anyone who marries a member of the Coquille.  Lorenz at anthropologi.info has the story. 

Opening Amazonia:  Bloomberg.com carried this piece on Amazonian indigineous activists struggling to prevent Brazilian mining companies from speculating on their land.  But some legislators in Brasilia are considering inviting companies to prevent even more damage from illegal diggers who are not regulated by the state.  (Thanks to Joanna Kirkpatrick for sending this in.)

Water, Water Everywhere:  Material World posted the work of Tony Whincup.  It’s a visually appealing photoessay on rising sea levels on the Kiribati Islands, north of New Zealand.

Anthropologists, Visit Taiwan!  This article in the Taiwan Journal interviewed a couple generations of American scholars of Taiwan.  It has some interesting insights about changing politics and practices of fieldwork over time in one place.

Nationalizing Patrimony:  The U.S. Federal Government is thinking about stepping in and taking over day to day operations of the Cahokia Mounds, the archaeological site for the indigenous community north of Mexico.  The site is currently operated by the state of Illinois, but floundering state budgets have made it hard for the local government to upkeep the site. 

The Daily Telegraph (UK) engaged in a little “business anthropology” to find out more about the exploding Indian middle class.  Their findings?

The Vas’s flat is tiny compared to the house of a British middle class family of four. There is a modestly sized living room, kitchen, one bedroom and a bathroom. As is common in India the Vas’s children, six-year-old Anaita and four-year-old Alden, share their parents’ bed – an arrangement which usually lasts until the children are at least ten…

In the corner of the room sits a flashy Samsung high definition television. I am given cola to drink. Embracing non-Indian goods is not a problem for this middle class family.

And who says journalists don’t make good ethnographers?

Perils of Racial Paranoia: The Philadelphia Inquirer interviewed John L. Jackson about comedy, Barack Obama, and the racial state of the (U.S.) nation. 

Boas, Exposed!  It’s always fun display anthropologists looking ridiculous and going native.  So, here you go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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WANTED! John Curran emailed me with a photograph of this poster.

Curran wrote:

My friends didn’t really know who Montgomery McFate is, or about her involvement with HTS/Minerva; they took one of the posters with them because they thought it was interesting.
I caught up with them at a concert last night (at Fort Reno Park). So the publicity war has literally been taken to the streets. My friend, Amanda (the one who took the poster down) is a reporter for Washington City Paper, and is “thinking of writing something about this on [their] website.”

Here is the article Curran’s friend wrote for the Washington City Paper’s Blog.

Not breaking news, but John Postill at Media Anthropology posted a pdf of extracts from Tim Ingold’s 2007 Radcliffe-Brown lecture.

Talking about Social Science: Jovan at Culture Matters posted a link to Socialtalks, a new bulletin board designed to increase online conversation among students in the social sciences.

Institutional Bureaucracy: Zachary M. Schrag, who maintains the Institutional Review Blog, wrote an in-depth review of Charle’s Bosk’s article “The New Bureaucracies of Virtue or When Form Fails to Follow Function,” from the November 2007 issue of PoLAR.  This will be part of an ongoing commentary on the articles on the IRB published in the same edition.

Revenge of the Theoreticians: Tony at Ethnography.com has had enough! He’s sick of applied social scientists talking trash about scholars in the academy. So, beware, academy-haters, because Tony has this acerbic response.

Around the Web- What’s new this week?

It seems to be a slow week in anthro/social happenings. Feel free to contribute more stories in the comments section of this post, or email me if you know another news source/website I should be reading.

(The) Word Up, New Museum: Brian Weinburg at N+1 wrote a review of the Genesis Museum of Creation in Petersburg Kentucky. The Museum promotes the “new creation theory,” which argues that the Earth was created between six and ten thousand years ago in six days of 24 hour duration. (This is in comparison with the old creationists, who believe the Earth existed, fell into decay and was reborn six thousand years ago according to the bible). Interesting stuff. (Thanks to Haidy at Material World for posting a link to N+1).

Water is a Feminist Issue: Yifat Susskind on Alternet.org wrote a poignant article on how the lack of access to water adversely affects poor women around the world.

Response to Gusterson: Last week, Hugh Gusterson wrote an opinion piece criticizing Project Minerva’s lack of academic oversight. Political scientist Peter D. Feaver replies to Gusterson’s article, arguing that funding is funding. Oddly enough, both articles feature the same photograph of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates sporting a smug grin.

Results of AAA Phone Conference: LL Wynn reports on the results of the phone conference AAA president Seetha Low held for members of the press.

They’re Digging for Fire: Also first linked to at Material World, the New York Times wrote a piece on growing fossil fuel speculation in the U.S. Southwest which is impinging on archaeological sites of Native American remains.

X-Ray Technicians Love Savage Minds: SM is number 87 on a list of X-Ray Technicians Schools.org‘s list of Top 100 Cutting-Edge Science Blogs. Why only 87? Don’t worry. It’s no indictment on the quality of SM. It’s just a result of their ranking methodology: “personal opinion.” Ah, my favorite method indeed.

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Gloss words: L.L. Wynn at Culture Matters wrote a piece on “American Ethnography Quasimonthly,” a new ethnography internet-mag which has so far posted public domain anthropology articles. While Wynn is reluctantly waiting to see whether their sexy image is irreverent or insulting, I think the latex dressed nun is fabulous.

Defining Human Rights in Japan: Chad Nilep at Linguistic Anthropology posted a commentary on the juridical understanding of human rights, as elaborated in a Supreme Court case in Japan. The posts summarizes an article written in the English-language The Japan Times.

Gusterson on Minerva: Hugh Gusterson writes on the problems of mixing academia with national security. The article got picked up on the AAA blog too.

Euphemizing Race: If John L. Jackson wrote more frequently, his blog might become my favorite online place to read. In this post, which is crossposted on the Chronicle of Higher Ed, Jackson discusses the sociological effects of avoiding discussing race.

The Importance of Being Earnest: While there was some rancor the last time I reported on this blog, I thought this was an interesting if not ridiculously slanted open letter on corporate anthropology. One of my favorite passages follows:

No academic anthropologist will thank you for making them look bad. By mid career you will be producing more academic work in your spare time than they can produce from the sumptuous, well funded circumstances of a tenured post. They will already resend [sic?] you for having broking the embargo against taking contemporary culture seriously, so now they’re really mad. Expect people to say nasty things on those few occasions you attend sherry hour. Expect people to break off conversation and walk away from you, when they learn you once taught at the Harvard Business School.

Hmm, I think I’d prefer one of those sumptuous, well-funded, do-nothing tenured posts rather than having to endure the brutal but productive work of corporate anthropology. I mean, if for no other reason but the sherry…

Double Dutch: The New York Times reported on the entrance of double dutch as a varsity sport in New York City high schools. The article includes an interview with Kyra Gaunt, author of The Games Black Girls Play.

Precious Metals: Lorenz at antropologi.info has posted on a new documentary on heavy metal cultures around the world. In addition to being a great synthesis of the press the documentary is receiving, Lorenz’s post suggests that metal is an interesting case study of globalization since word-of-mouth and not mass media has been a propelling force of metal’s spread to places like India and Israel. You can also watch the trailer on youtube.

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To the Trees! Ted McIlwraith at fieldnotes ponders in a short post whether environmentalists will come into conflict with indigenous communities in British communities British Columbia now that the latter have invested in logging companies.

Cooking for Peace: L.L. Wynn at Culture Matters spotted a book on Cuisines of the Axis of Evil, written with the goal of fostering better international relations through learning about America’s “enemies.” Wynn writes the book might apply to a class she teaches on Food across Cultures. But I wonder if there were a book for the class she wants to teach on Sex across Cultures (say Sex in the Axis of Evil) that this might foster even more cultural understanding.

Materiality and Photography: This post by Haidy L Geismar at Material Culture provides a broad survey of online resources on photography and invites comments for more suggestions. As Haidy notes in the introductory comment, there is a great deal of work out there on the materiality of photographs, which makes the online discussion of photographs all the more interesting.

It may be a favorite pastime of American graduate students to complain about the academic job market and worry about finding a job. Well, the good news is we’re not alone. Apparently, Japanese students and recent PhDs have the same problem.

Cheering Out of Place: Anne Applebaum’s article on slate on the international composition of ostensibly local sports teams offers an interesting case to think about a potentially emergent group of transnational elites and changing expressions of nationalism.

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iPhone Brings People Together: danah boyd at apophenia wrote a piece on whether iPhone could become a wide-spread enough platform to create new social clusters (which, interestingly enough, should be distinguished from both networks and communities).

Archaeology as Anthropology: cfeagans at Hot Cup of Joe gives a nice summary of Lewis Binford’s classic 1958 essay.

Don’t Quote Me: diende at Neuroanthropology traced the popular press coverage of a recent article from the American Sociological Review. The journal article suggested that genetic factors may be one of many variables in male delinquent behavior. The resulting Reuters title read: “Study finds genetic link to delinquency.” diende concludes:

So, to sum up, we get the reductionism and determinism tied into biology, all with a look at what might count as popular—biological explanations for behavior, drug interventions, genes-made-me-do-it defenses. The social science side is treated as “specific” and secondary. In other words: there is still a lot of work for the critical neurosciences and every other related field to do.

Anthropology’s Renaissance: Although I didn’t know the discipline was in the dark ages, Ken Banks writes that the recent of some sociocultural anthropologists towards technology studies has produced a mini-renaissance and taken away the ‘mystery’ that obscures anthropology from the public.

Repatriating American Remains: In a nice twist of fate, the U.S. is asking Mexico for the remains of several American soldiers found in a grave dating to 1856 from the Mexican-American War.

The New York Times published an obituary on Penn-State archaeologist William T. Sanders, which includes the following:

Late in his career, Dr. Sanders achieved a degree of popularity as a co-host of a PBS series on ancient cultures. But in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology, he was best known for a landmark survey of central Mexican sites in the 1970s.

AAA Conference Call on Minerva

(Update 2008-07-18 8:28 PT): This is apparently a “media release” not a “member release” meaning that the conference call is for members of the media (which is why SM, via Strong, received it). I guess that means that all you members planning on participating better beg off, unless you are members of the media as well, as those of us at the elite Savage Minds Headquarters are. But seriously, don’t call in and grief. Give the AAA and Dr. Low your attention and your respect if you do.

Strong forwarded this email yesterday on an AAA to discuss ethical and intellectual standards for Project Minerva. Imagining the variety of perspectives and disagreements (and as Culture Matters points out, people may be calling in from different time zones around the world), a conference call seems like a pretty difficult medium to handle so many people waiting to speak. Should the moderator allow for questions that is.

Anthropologists Critique Pentagon’s ‘Minerva’
Conference Call July 31, 2-3 pm

For Immediate Release:
July 16, 2008

Anthropologists have a long and, at times, troubled history of working with the military during times of conflict—from World War II to the present-day war on terror.

Recent controversies surrounding the Pentagon’s Human Terrain System, a $40 million program that embeds cultural advisors in combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan, have spilled over into new anxieties surrounding the Pentagon’s ‘Minerva’ program, a Defense Department
initiative to fund social science and humanities research in Pentagon-designated national security-related areas, including terrorism, religious fundamentalism and Chinese military and
technology.

Following a speech on April 14 by Defense Secretary Robert M Gates announcing his vision for Minerva, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) issued a letter from its president to address some concerns about the program. The letter called for a redirection of program management to external organizations that have extensive experience in peer-review and are familiar with the ethical standards and concerns of the anthropology discipline.

Continue reading →

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Although I hate to change the topic…

Turn Your Canopeners into Plowshares: In an ongoing series about the global food crisis, National Geographic reports that the South African government is encouraging the rural and urban poor to return to subsistence agriculture. Not mentioned, of course, was just how to ‘return.’ National Geographic did not report on any government initiative to distribute seeds, topsoil, or farming knowledge. And correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t many traditional South African societies cattle-based?

Open-Access Objects: Reuters reported on the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology’s plan to digitize and make an accessible catalog of their entire collection.

Peer tested, journal approved: Tony Waters at ethnography.com shares with the reader some of the more colorful peer review comments he received on a recent article and discusses the benefits and drawbacks of the system.

The New York Times posted the obituary of Ruth Cardoso, urban anthropologist and former first lady of Brazil.

New Digital Divides: French blog Internetactu (English translation here) interviews Japanese sociologist Mito Akiyoshi on growing forms of inequality via moblie technology. Akioshi explodes the myth of the techno-overloaded Japanese citizen. Meanwhile, the Miami Herald wrote on the family remittances of migrant-worker that are fueling a mini technology boom occurring in Maya communities in Chiapas, Mexico. [Thanks to Neuroantropology for spotting the Akioshi interview).

“We’re Quite Comfortable with Our History:” Quote by a member of the Accohannock tribe in the U.S. midatlantic. The Accohannock are petitioning the state of Maryland for official recognition, but have been accused of fraud on their tribal website.

Archaeological Crime Scene: Earlier this year, the FBI barred archaeologists from the Bureau of Land Mangement from participating while the crime agency excavated the remains of a recently-discovered 100+ year-old corpse. According to the article in the Utah Daily News, the FBI are investigating the case for undisclosed reasons.

Web 2.0 Lecture on Web 2.0: Michael Wesch posted a video of a talk he gave last month in Mantioba. Like the review says, grab an iced coffee and enjoy.

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The Moderate Menace: Patricia Cohen at the New York Times writes about the graying of 60’s era radical American faculty and the new generation of politically heterogeneous (but altogether moderate) professors. The article considers whether the shift in faculty values is the result of a pure generational shift or the increase in corporatization of the university forcing junior faculty to be more career-oriented.

UC Press Only Gets Better with Age: UC Press is moving aggressively into the wine publishing market, releasing six wine books in 2008 alone. Could an ethnography of wine culture be far off?

The Death of Life-Writing: Some may consider it the antithesis of ethnography, but this Guardian article on the academic, literary, and market troubles facing biography proves an interesting commentary on the ups and downs of a non-fiction genre.

Slot Machines Destroy Your Mind: No kidding? Lorenz at antropologi.info comments on Natasha Dow Schull’s piece in the Washington Post warning readers about the antisocial effects of slot machines.

You Too Can Edit an Open Access Journal: L.L. Wynn at Culture Matters published the spam letter she received inviting her to be the editor-in-chief of “The Open Demography Journal.” One little problem. Wynn isn’t a demographer. For more on Bentham Science, publishers, the organization that sent Wynn the email, read this interview.

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Second HTS Fatality: [via Ethnography.com] News agencies have reported the death of Nicole Suveges, the second social scientist affiliated with Human Terrain System to die in the field. Suveges died along with 11 other military personnel and civilians in an explosion in Iraq.

[Update: For a good round up of different articles on Suveges, click here]

Ethnography on the Big Screen: John L. Jackson wrote a provocative piece for theroot.com on the film adaptation of sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh’s recent urban ethnography Gang Leader for a Day. Jackson compares the project to the now pedestrian movie genre of educated outsider goes to the hood. But he also questions whether the movie will capture the everyday quality of ethnography and if this movie might change public perceptions of anthropology. [Thanks to Neuroanthropology for posting a link to this article.]

Covering Old Ground: The Guardian reported that the so-called recently-discovered Amazonian tribe was documented in 1910, and that Funai, the Brazilian Indian Agency, has been tracking the group for about twenty years

Community Standards Online: This Slate article discusses a new legal defense for violating community standards of decency–google search data tells you more about a community’s standards than what they report. The author, William Saletan writes:

It’s a clever argument. But it assumes that morality is what people do, not what they say. “Time and time again you’ll have jurors sitting on a jury panel who will condemn material that they routinely consume in private,” Walters tells the Times. Thanks to Google, “we can show how people really think and feel and act in their own homes.”

Perhaps google searches might be common ethnographic evidence in the future. The logic of participant observation also relies upon the conceit that what people do is more telling than what they say. Saletan goes on to write how the Internet rearranges public and private spheres, and constitutes a new public morality made by the aggregate of anonymous searches. Google bots might make great online informants to help the anthropologist get inside the head of the native.

David Harvey Online: Kerim pointed me to David Harvey’s blog, where Harvey is posting podcasts of his lectures on Marx’s Capital, Volume 1. It’s a thirteen-lecture series, with a podcast coming out once a week(?). You can also subscribe to the podcasts via I-Tunes and donate to Harvey’s project.

Author, what’s that? Lorenz at antropologi.info compiled and commented on the conversation happening over at Culture Matters on the hurdles of getting pdf access to one’s own article from Sage Publications.

Culture Wars Come to Philly: The New York Times reported on nine Philadelphia institutions’ preparations for the Year of Evolution, celebrating Darwin’s 200th birthday. Events will include both scientific exhibits and lectures/roundtables on the clash of evolution and intelligent design in the science education.

Three Strikes…Maximilian posted a piece on Open Anthropology on the no-win double bind of studying self vs. studying other in anthropology. He also attached a video of a great spoken word performance by Suheir Hammad from early Def Poetry Jam.

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Montgomery McFate’s Nom de Plume: The secret is out. When she is not doing for embedded anthropology what Anita Bryant did for orange juice, Montgomery McFate is busy writing lusty blog entries of military men on her site I Luv a Man in Uniform. In a statement to Wired’s Blog, McFate wrote that she can not affirm nor deny that she is Pentagon Diva, the author of the blog who describes herself in the About Me section:

Hey girls, remember TeenBeat? Remember when you thought Andy Gibb and the Bay City Rollers were just the hottest boys in the world? Go on, don’t be ashamed – you can admit it! Now that we’re all grown up, our tastes have changed – no more foppish, self-indulgent rock stars for us! Since there are so many studly guys in uniform slinging rifles these days, what better way to show our appreciation than a little fan site dedicated to men in uniform? As the Gang of Four once sang, “The girls — they love to see you shoot!”

Eww. Although Marc Tyrrell at In Harmonium emphasizes that Pentagon Diva and I Luv a Man … is essentially a big joke, Maximillian Forte at Open Anthropology suggests that the joke isn’t all that funny.

And so it begins… Wired and Culture Matters reported that the Pentagon has officially released a call for proposal submissions for Project Minerva.

Culture on the Move: Sandra Rubia Silva, a Brazilian PhD student, posted this piece at Material World on her proposal to research cell phone usage in the South of Brazil.

Really, Really Cold War: So cold it happened in the Ice Age. (Ouch, bad joke.) ABC News reports on recent findings out of University of Missouri-Columbia that there was a prehistoric arms escalation of arrowhead technology. The projecting of current events into the archaeological record and then using them as an example to illuminate our world might best be illustrated by, well, ABC’s illustration of arrowhead evolution.

ABC arms race

New Journal: Kerim passed along a recent announcement for (con)textos, a new PhD student journal in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Barcelona. Enjoy!

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Well, first things first. Happy birthday to Strong, although it’s already past in Finland.

“Less Sexy” Indigenous People: Culture Matters and Gringo Tambo have collected a number of reports on harassment of indigenous people in Sucre, Bolivia’s other capital city. Jovan at Culture Matters was quick to point out the irony of this story breaking so close to the story on “undiscovered” Amazonians, aptly calling it the “less sexy indigenous story.”

AAA makes NPR: The AAA online project on Understanding Race was featured on NPR. Listen Here. In tangentially related news, new findings on genetic diversity among 2000 year-old remains in Denmark are being touted as conclusive counter evidence to the notion of purity of a Nordic race. (also here).

Alternet reposted a great article by Nir Rosen on the Ur district in Baghdad–a really interesting neighborhood study and analysis of urban politics.

Social Educating Sites? InsideHigherEd reported a couple weeks ago that Blackboard has a Facebook application. According to one Blackboard representative interviewed, the rationale was to get students to check Blackboard more often, since they associate that website with ‘work’ and facebook with recreation.

Spartans of the Plains: Literary Review published a review of Pekka Hämäläinen’s book on Comanche resistance to Spanish and U.S. colonialism. The reviewer accused the book of being too academic and jargony, but perhaps that won’t bother SM readers.

Tourists meet Immigrants. Immigrants, Tourists: I am not versed at all in academic studies of tourism or immigration, but one common complaint I’ve heard is that the two fields don’t often talk to one another. That’s why I found the photographs from Imogen Tyler’s article on ASA Globalog quite compelling. The article doesn’t directly address the relationship of tourists and immigrants, but it is an interesting read nonetheless.

Happy Fathers Day: So, SM is not endorsing a transcultural idea of fatherhood, but Slate’s photographs of fathers from around the world is pretty adorable.

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The Sleep of Reason (Produces Monsters): Lorenz at anthopologi.info spotted this disturbing article quoting Iain Edgar, a social anthropologist who claims that dreams are used and interpreted by Islamic militants to justify violence. Edgar is quoted in the article: “Overall, how Moslems [sic], and people in general, understand their night dreams is a powerful tool in assessing their worldview and implicit key motivations.”

Looking for other Motivations for Human Action? Reuter’s report on this cell-phone study, whose conclusion confirms the truism: we are creatures of habit.

While Chris humbly claims that the moment of free software, the subject of his new book, may be untimely, the press coverage of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)’s begrudging collaboration with Microsoft shows that issues surrounding open-source and free software are anything but passé. Originally, OLPC claimed it could make a USD$100 computer for children in the rural global South by using Linux and open-source software, but the initiative has had to modify its approach as more countries show a preference for traditionally commercial platforms. Business Week interestingly questions whether OLPC’s approach is culturally imperialist.

National Geographic does Neoliberalism: I thought this was an interesting piece for National Geographic. They covered the crisis of rising corn costs in Mexico and did a fairly thoughtful job connecting it to American speculation on ethanol. And the article almost manages to talk about Mexico and corn without mentioning its rich indigenous heritage. Near the bottom of the second page it reads:

“Francisco Avila may soon join those statistics [of the unemployed]. He harvests a strain of white corn that traces its lineage to seeds planted by the Aztec and Maya cultures on a small 6-acre (2.4-hectare) plot in central Mexico.”

Well, what did you expect? It’s National Geographic.

Book Review: Third Tone Devil at Culture Matters reviewed Xiang Biao’s Global Body Shopping: An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry and discusses its significance as an ethnography by a Chinese anthropologist which is not on China.

Book Reconsideration: The New York Sun published this ‘reconsideration’ of Karl Polyani’s The Great Transformation.