All posts by Ryan

Ryan

Ryan Anderson is a cultural and environmental anthropologist. His current research focuses on coastal conservation, sustainability, and development in the Californias. He also writes about politics, economics, and media. You can reach him at ryan AT savageminds dot org or @anthropologia on twitter.

Anthro News takes on the adjunct crisis, and while commenting will cost you, the irony is free

This just in.  It appears that the AAA is starting to address some of the serious issues that adjunct scholars are facing day in and day out.  In a new post on the Anthropology News site, AAA president Leith Mullings takes on the adjunct issue.  This is good news, because this issue seriously needs some critical attention, especially since more and more new PhDs keep hitting the labor force each year.  This problem isn’t going away any time soon.  Mullings starts off her post about “Inequality Within” by citing Sarah Kendzior’s 2012 piece “The closing of American academia,” which highlights just how bad things are getting in academia these days.

Mullings covers many of the key aspects of the adjunct problem: 1) lack of access to adequate health care; 2) the fact that about 3/4 of the teaching workforce is NOT on the tenure track; 3) the abysmally low pay for many adjuncts (median compensation per class is about 2700 bucks); 4) adjuncts have to deal with high travel costs in order to teach enough classes; 5) retirement benefits are lacking; 6) they have very limited access to educational resources (many don’t have offices, libraries, etc); 7) serious job insecurity, which often “translates into lack of academic freedom.”

Clearly, there’s no shortage of problems.  We all know this.  The question now is what we’re all going to do about it.  Sit back and watch, or find a way to band together to start making some changes?  Mullings concludes her post with this: Continue reading →

Update: There was no change of heart (open access + a little satire)

I know this is a while after the fact, but I just wanted to make something very, very clear.  The last post I wrote about open access, in which I supposedly had a “change of heart,” was 100 percent complete, absolute balderdash.  It was satire.  A joke.  For April Fool’s Day.  I realize that I never put a big “GOTCHA” in the post, so it could still be a little confusing.  So, there you have it.  Just wanted to make that nice and clear.  Just to make sure that nobody takes that argument seriously.  Thanks.  As you were.

anthropology, race & racism III: oops, wrong guy edition

I have three links for you:

  1. The Saudi marathon man:

What made them suspect him? He was running—so was everyone. The police reportedly thought he smelled like explosives; his wounds might have suggested why. He said something about thinking there would be a second bomb—as there was, and often is, to target responders. If that was the reason he gave for running, it was a sensible one. He asked if anyone was dead—a question people were screaming. And he was from Saudi Arabia, which is around where the logic stops. Was it just the way he looked, or did he, in the chaos, maybe call for God with a name that someone found strange?

What happened next didn’t take long. “Investigators have a suspect—a Saudi Arabian national—in the horrific Boston Marathon bombings, The Post has learned.” That’s the New York Post, which went on to cite Fox News. The “Saudi suspect”—still faceless—suddenly gave anxieties a form.

2. Meet the two immigrant runners who were wrongly fingered as “possible suspects” in the Boston Marathon bombing:

Barhoum, a Moroccan immigrant who attends Revere High School outside Boston, apparently became aware yesterday that his photo was being linked to the bomb plot. In a Facebook post he assured his 1776 friends that “u will see guys I’m did not do anything.” Noting that “Shit is real,” Barhoum reported that he was going “to the court rightnow,” adding later that, “I’m just going to tell them that it was not me.”

3. Jezebel: It took two whole days for a random Muslim to get assaulted in Boston:

A Palestinian woman said she was assaulted while taking a late morning stroll with her baby daughter and friend by a man who accused her of being a terrorist. We thought someone would’ve been publicly attacked and berated for secretly planning the Boston Marathon bombings within hours of the explosions, but nope — racists managed to contain themselves for two days. Bravo. Continue reading →

When "culture" erases history

Sure, sometimes “culture” can tell us a lot about human behavior and differences.  But there are also times when arguments based upon the concept of culture can obscure just as much as they reveal.

Right now I am in the middle of going through all of my interviews, making notes, and looking for themes I can draw from for my dissertation.  Things are coming along.  I figured I’d share some of what I am doing…sort of let you in on the process as I work through it.  If you don’t already know, my research is about the conflicts over tourism development on the East Cape region of Baja California Sur.  These conflicts are, in part, about development.  Or, more specifically, about what type of development people want to see happen in the region.  Some of the area’s residents are in favor of large scale development, some root for something along the lines of “sustainable development,” and still others basically don’t want to see anything change at all.  I worked in a small coastal community in the heart of the East Cape, a place where land ownership is one of the most critical issues. Continue reading →

Readings, here and there, plus comments

Lots of things to read, but not much time to post about each one.  So, why not post some snippets, links, and comments?  Ok, I will then.

  1. Check out this important post by Kate Clancy about harassment and abuse in anthropological fieldwork.  Here’s the intro:

It was getting late, the student center all but deserted. My old friend and I had a table to ourselves, awkwardly wedged among the chairs that had been set in a circle for an invited talk I had just given to some undergraduates about issues for women in science.

My friend alluded to having a challenging field site. Her face, which was usually open and bright, with a smile so infectious and delighted and thoroughly optimistic you couldn’t help but love her, was subdued, careful. She talked around it for a while. Then she told me of her sexual assault in the field.

Continue reading →

Sarah Kendzior on life after a PhD in anthropology

Check out this interview with Sarah Kendzior about life after the PhD.  A lot to think about.  And a lot that many people do not want to talk about.  Here’s my favorite quote:

What I realized during my year on the job market is that having a traditional academic career is not as important to me as participating meaningfully in public life—and that the former actually precludes the latter. If I had an academic job, all my work would be behind a paywall. I would lose my audience and my integrity—because I would be working only for myself, only to meet tenure requirements, and I like to engage with the world. I speak to the public.

Read it.

Against Open Access: A change of heart

Open Access (OA) has always been an issue that the contributors to Savage Minds have covered thoroughly.  When I joined the SM crew, I too joined the chorus singing the praises of OA and calling for change in our publishing regimes.  I spent a lot of time over the past year or so writing about OA issues.  It was always OA this, and OA that, and on and on.  I am sure many of you got sick of it all.  But I haven’t written about it much over the past couple of months.  There’s a reason for this.  After some recent experiences, and a lot of reflection about academic publishing, I have completely changed my position about open access.  In fact, I think the whole push for OA is a waste of time, if not a complete delusion.

About six months ago I decided to look into internships and other opportunities within the academic publishing field.  Out of pure luck, I managed to land a pretty sweet three month gig with one of the top academic publishers here in North America.  This is part of the reason why I haven’t been posting much on SM, and why I specifically gave all the OA stuff a bit of a rest.  I was intrigued and also a bit skeptical about this chance at getting a closer look at the inner-workings of the publishing world.  Due to a disclosure agreement with this publishing company, I cannot tell you which one I worked with.  But I can tell you that this experience is what really changed my mind about all this open access business.  And I can also tell you that the coffee they gave us was *not from 7-11.  It was amazing.  I didn’t even have to add a bunch of Coffeemate to make it drinkable.  Amazing!  But I am getting off point.  Sorry.

Here are a few of the unforgettable lessons I learned. Continue reading →

anthropology, race, and racism II: the way we look edition

Three easy to find definitions of racism:

  1. A belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others (dictionary.com).

  2. Faye V. Harrison (from here): “My working definition of racism is the following: any action, whether intended or not, that reinforces and reproduces racial inequalities, which are ultimately structured around disparities of power.”

  3. From Tim Wise’s FAQ page: Continue reading →

anthropology and student debt

Student debt is everywhere.  It seems like everyone is going into debt.  It’s unstoppable, endless, ubiquitous.  We’re all in debt.  We’re all drowning in numbers and compound interest.  All from an attempt at “getting ahead” and going to school.  Ya, something’s not right about all this.  You know this.  More and more seem to fall into the debt trap each day.  This includes a lot of anthropology students–graduate and undergraduate.  I am pretty sure none of you out there started studying anthropology in order to get trapped in debt.  I sure didn’t.  Did you?  I doubt it.

So what happened?

The subject of student debt sort of ebbs and flows.  Sometimes it comes up more than others.  I was hearing about it a lot when all the Occupy Wall Street stuff was going on last year, and when this book, and this one, were published.  That was about the time that I first heard about the project on student debt.  Lately though I haven’t heard too much about this issue…but it’s not like it has gone away.  It’s still here.  And we’re all still in debt (well, not all of us, but far too many).

This past week a few different people sent me some different links about student debt. Continue reading →

Race, racism, anthropology #1: Mullings on “Interrogating Racism”

The comments section from my last post about the Napoleon Chagnon controversy eventually led into a discussion about race, racism, and anthropology.  If you read more about the debates surrounding Chagnon, it’s pretty clear that they bring up some important (and complex) issues about race, power, the academy–and anthropology’s place within all of this.  Near the end of the comment thread, one of our readers mentioned an article that’s well worth reading  (thanks, Kat): Interrogating Racism: Toward an Antiracist Anthropology, by Leith Mullings (Annual Review of Anthropology, 2005).

I thought that would be a good place to start for a discussion about some of these issues.  So I read the article and jotted down some notes.  I am just going to go through some of my own questions and responses to the piece by Mullings, and then I’ll open things up for discussion.  Please feel free to jump in whenever you want. Continue reading →

The New York Times on Chagnon

I received this link via the e-anth listserv and thought I would pass it along.  This piece in the NY Times gives a pretty good overview of some of the controversies and debates that have surrounded the career of Napoleon Chagnon.  Here’s the intro:

Among the hazards Napoleon Chagnon encountered in the Venezuelan jungle were a jaguar that would have mauled him had it not become confused by his mosquito net and a 15-foot anaconda that lunged from a stream over which he bent to drink. There were also hairy black spiders, rats that clambered up and down his hammock ropes and a trio of Yanomami tribesmen who tried to smash his skull with an ax while he slept. (The men abandoned their plan when they realized that Chagnon, a light sleeper, kept a loaded shotgun within arm’s reach.) These are impressive adversaries — “Indiana Jones had nothing on me,” is how Chagnon puts it — but by far his most tenacious foes have been members of his own profession.

At 74, Chagnon may be this country’s best-known living anthropologist; he is certainly its most maligned. His monograph, “Yanomamö: The Fierce People,” which has sold nearly a million copies since it was first published in 1968, established him as a serious scientist in the swashbuckling mode — “I looked up and gasped when I saw a dozen burly, naked, filthy, hideous men staring at us down the shafts of their drawn arrows!” — but it also embroiled him in controversy.

I heard various takes on Chagnon throughout my anthropological training.  I read his book about the “Yanomamo” in some of my very first classes at community college, and then as the years went on I heard about the debates, the fights, the controversies.  When I first heard his name I had no idea he was such a controversial figure.  But then, a lot of thing[s] that I first heard about in my early anthropology courses became a bit more “complicated” along the way.  It’s interesting to me that this author calls Chagnon the best-known living anthropologist.  Maybe he is.  I guess it depends on who you ask though–and where you ask.  Anyway, this NY Times piece is an interesting overview of some of these histories, and it’s worth reading.  Read the rest here.

UPDATE 2/20/13: A lot of folks posted some great resources and links in the comment thread.  I thought I’d update the post and put them up here to make things a little more accessible.  As Jason Antrosio said, this story definitely needs some serious contextualization.  Let me know if you have other links/sources and I will add them here.

1. Elizabeth Povinelli’s review of Chagnon’s new book.

2. Response to the NY Times piece by AAA president Leith Mullings.

3. Jon Marks on Jared Diamond and Napoleon Chagnon.

4. Sociobalderdash, and the Yanomami? Part II by Ken Weiss.

5. Meet Joe Science by Jonathan Marks.

6. Marshall Sahlins on Chagnon’s research.

7. What the press is saying about Napoleon Chagnon (Louis Proyect)

8. The Weird Irony at the Heart of the Napoleon Chagnon Affair (John Horgan @Scientific American)

DeLong and the economists on Debt, Chapter 12

UPDATE 2/9/13: A bit of a correction to the title here.  I called this post “DeLong and the economists on Debt” but it should have been called “DeLong, the political scientist (Farrell), and the sociologist (Rossman) on Debt.”  Apologies for that–I didn’t do my homework there.  Thanks to Gabriel Rossman for pointing this out.

I was reading through some of the comments to Rex’s latest post about Jared Diamond, in which he ultimately argues that David Graeber’s Debt might be seen as the anti-Diamond (in terms of argument).  Debt, Rex argues, is one of the few “big picture” books that have been written by an anthropologist since Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History, which was published more than 30 years ago (1982).  Three decades is a pretty long time (and we anthros wonder why so few people seem to know what we do).  Diamond gets a lot of attention from many anthropologists, in part, because he is writing exactly the kinds of books that we really do not produce anymore.

Personally, I think we give him a little too much attention and air-time when we put so much energy into combating his arguments.  If anthropologists disagree with the version of world history that Diamond is putting out there, my answer (as it was when I wrote this) is to write solid books that make our case.  Yes, of course that’s easier said than done–but please tell me one thing that’s truly worthwhile that doesn’t require a ton of work.  Nobody said any of this should be easy.  If we have different–or “better”–ideas, then we need to find ways to get them out there (through books, or blogs, or interviews or smoke signals or whatever).  Going directly after Diamond every time he publishes is kind of a dead end if you ask me.  It continually sets us up for claims that we’re just reacting because of jealousy or sour grapes.  The way around that is to jump in the ring, take part, and produce the kinds of books that mark the way to a different explanatory path.*

Debt, argues Rex, is one of those books.  And I think he’s right. Continue reading →

Good reads: Antrosio on Eric Wolf; Hart on Polanyi

I have been traveling from one place to another the past couple of weeks, but I have still had some time to keep up on the goings-on in the anthro-blogosphere.  The first one I want to share is Jason Antrosio’s post Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History–Geography, States, Empires.  Antrosio links the discussion to Jared Diamond and his famous answer to “Yali’s Question”:

Starting in the 1960s, Eric Wolf was already asking what Jared Diamond in the 1997 Guns, Germs, and Steel called Yali’s Question: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”

Answering that question, as Eric Wolf understood, means accounting specifically for how Europe went from being a land that in A.D. 800 “was of little account in the affairs of the wider world” (1982:71) to those effective polities that could launch overseas adventures. Diamond would have us believe that the answer lies in the shape of the continents, latitude and longitude gradients, and agriculture, particularly large domesticated animals. Although this much older story may account for the fact that many of the most powerful polities have been in Eurasia, it cannot account for the rise of Europe 800-1400 A.D.

Everyone agrees that geography matters. Eric Wolf’s survey of the world in 1400 is full of maps, descriptions of terrain, and accounts of available resources. But serious historians reject Jared Diamond’s rationale for the rise of Europe.

To truly get a grip on Yali’s Question, we have to turn back to Eric Wolf in 1982. Continue reading →

How to go open access in 3 easy steps

First, I want to start off with my favorite comment from SM readers in the past couple of weeks.  It comes from “Gio” on Rex’s post about the passing of Aaron Schwartz:

Yes, stop mourning: act. Stop obsessing about tenure, publish your best work open-access. Donate. Stop even debating interminably about OA. Do something concrete with your own capital (scholastic, labor or financial).

Runner up for my favorite comment goes to David Graeber, who posted this on the same thread:

Well, you could publish your work for free.

Or take part in this: http://pdftribute.net/

Which leads me to this: THREE EASY STEPS TO GOING OPEN ACCESS: Continue reading →

Anthropology: The landmark books

Last year I posted an open thread called “Anthropology: Five Books,” in which I asked readers to list the five books they feel best represent the discipline.  The responses were great.  I think it’s time to try another open thread along similar lines, but let’s take a bit of a different route.  During that last thread, I asked about books that both represent anthropology and appeal to general readers.  This time, let’s talk about the books that form your own personal anthropological canon.

Where did this idea come from?  I was just reading Eric Wolf’s “Pathways of Power,” which has a really fascinating intellectual autobiography (the introduction of the book).  Wolf lists three “landmark books” that he read early in his career that had tremendous impact upon his thinking:

The first was Karl Wittfogel’s Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Chinas (1931), an extraordinary, ecologically oriented study of the Chinese economy, which dissented from the view that China was merely feudal and saw it instead as an instance of the Asiatic-bureaucracy mode of production.  The second was Paul Sweezy’s The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942), which helped me systematize my understandings of Marxian political economy.  The third was C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins (1938), on the slave rebellions of Haiti in the wake of the French Revolution, one of the first attempts to write a history of a people supposedly “without history.”

So, following Wolf’s example, what are YOUR three landmark books?  What are the three books that most influenced how you think about, and practice, anthropology?  It might also be interesting to talk about the differences between books that have wide appeal, and those that have tremendous, long-lasting influence within the field.