Cultural Studies at the Crossroads: Michael Bérubé writes a very convincing analysis of the challenges facing cultural studies, from both structural/institutional and theoretical standpoints. Perhaps the best moment (or my favorite, since I’m a bit snarky) is Bérubé’s quote of Stuart Hall: “I really cannot read another cultural-studies analysis of Madonna or The Sopranos.”

Everywhere are Signs: Over at Material World, Poltical Science PhD candidate Jeremy Menchik posted a photoessay on the signs of pluralism at an Indonesian political rally.

Conspicuous Data Collection: Maximilian Forte at Open Anthropology posted a paper given last year on the publicity that HTS generates and how “it was created above all for domestic consumption, as part of a domestic propaganda effort and a public relations war conducted through the mainstream media.”

Situated Television Knowledges: For your viewing pleasure… Robert D. Kaplan writes a short but punchy plug for watching Al Jazeera’s international channel. Forget Lehrer, Kaplan writes, Al Jazeera “is what the internationally minded elite class really yearns for.” Kaplan describes Al Jazeera’s slant on international politics as having a forgivable bias towards the disempowered, but one that might well represent the middle-of-the-road view from developing nations.

What to Say to that Someone Who Knows Everything: Have a problem with your dissertation advisor? Kristen Hoggatt at the Smart Set shows how to turn your dissatisfaction into a poem.

We’re All Abnormal: Christopher Lane at Slate reports on how some psychiatrists see deviance as a growth industry.  The American Psychiatric Association is busy editing the DSM-V, which looks like it will provide diagnoses for internet addiction, mathematics disorder, and sibling relational problem.  But some sober critics are warning that the DSM-V might pathologize us all.

Methods for Methods: LL Wynn posted a fantastic piece at Culture Matters about her experience designing a graduate student methods course.  Wynn’s idea for the course was ambitious: design, implement and write up a project in one semester, and then submit write-ups for publication.  Most of Wynn’s challenges stemmed from the human subjects approval process, which held up her students from doing completing a project in one term.  But Wynn came up with a creative solution …

Stepping Out, Dressing Down: Samantha Gross from the Associated Press reported on the changing consumer habits of low-income youth, who are losing their desire to spend large sums of money on designer fashion items.  Gross’s report includes observations from Shirley Brice Heath as well.

This Just in…Language is Complex: It seems like pop-theories on language are in vogue, or is it me?  Check out Newsweek’s short piece on their Whorfian take on language and thought.  NY Times Magazine also posted an interesting little history of gendered pronouns in English.  [NY Times website requires you sign in with a free login to see this article.  Or should I say requires readers that ‘they’ sign in.]

Some Questions Endure (Still): Historian Timothy Burke posted a response to an article on last week’s SM around the web on angry philosophers, upset at the NEH for trying to poach on their disciplinary territory.  Burke begins by relating to the philosophers, suggesting that he wouldn’t be pleased by a grant asking promoting pre-disciplinary approaches to “time and the past.”  But, Burke asks, what might be the benefits of being exposed to unorthodox approaches.

Time Magazine interviewed Karen Ho on her ethnographic research on Wall Street.  Explaining the attitudes she encountered on Wall Street in the late 90s early 00s, Ho says:

Wall Street bankers understand that they are liquid people. It’s part of their culture. I had bankers telling me, “I might not be at my job next year so I’m going to make sure to get the biggest bonus possible.” I had bankers who advised the AOL–Time Warner merger saying, “Oh, gosh, this might not work out, but I probably won’t be here when it doesn’t work out.” I looked at them like, “What?” Their temporality is truncated.

Material Knowledge: Barbara Kirschenblatt Gimblett posted a piece on Material World about the work of the Museum of Polish Jews reconstructing the past.  At the heart of Gimblett’s discussion is a question what kind of past object should museums (re)produce.  The Museum of Polish Jews, for example, decided not to hire a set design company to reconstruct an 18th century Polish synagogue.  Instead, they hope to recover the knowledge of building woodhouse synagogs by actually building one.

Have something you want included?  Reply in the comments, or email for future editions.

The Chemistry Behind Homo-Blind-Daticus: New York Times technology reporter Alina Tugend reports on the growing number of websites who are turning to science-y approaches to matchmaking. As Tugend reports, one of the latest, chemistry.com, is guided by bio anthropologist Helen Fischer. Fischer’s system, adopted by the site, uses a questionnaire to discover the brain chemistry ‘type’ of each dater. Asked if it works, Fischer commented, ‘nobody knows for sure.’

Disciplinary ill Communication: Inside Higher Ed reported on the new NEH initiative that is making philosophers pull their disheveled hair out. The Enduring Questions grant encourages scholars from various disciplines to consider key ‘pre-disciplinary questions’ like ‘What is Happiness?’ or ‘Is There a Human Nature?’ Angry philosophers’ response? That’s our gig.

Sorry to Burst Your Bubble: Oh yes! The Economist talks ish on economics. The Economist writes on how the current world financial crisis has humbled ‘an arrogant profession’ [economics], at least in public opinion. While the rest of the article disappoints, turning a pointed critique to a how-to plan for building up better financial models, the concluding line reads: “For in the end economists are social scientists, trying to understand the real world. And the financial crisis has changed that world.” True that.

Conceiving the Right Object in Time: Material World posted some of Webb Keane’s thoughts on the possibilities of worlds of radically different ontologies and whether a temporality of objects can make sense with such ontological distinctions. Did I just write that? No, it was past me. Whoa.

From Eagleton, with Love: Sociologist Laurie Taylor interviews Terry Eagleton on his new book Reason, Faith and Revolution, and his continuing public debate with Richard Dawkins over religion. One particularly interesting point, Eagleton describes his humanist differences with Dawkins’s humanism:

“Dawkins deeply believes in the flourishing of the free human spirit which makes him a liberal humanist rather than a tragic humanist. He believes that if only those terrible guys out there would stop stifling and shackling us, then our creative capacities would flourish. I don’t believe that. As a Marxist I reject that simple liberationism. I’m not again humanism. I’m for a humanism which recognises the price of liberation. And that’s what I call tragic humanism

Know Thyself: Maximilian Forte at Open Anthropology asks a simple, provocative question. If cross-cultural understanding promotes peace (as HTS state as their raison d’etre), then why not apply the increase the cross-cultural understanding of the American public itself?
Have something else you want included? Write about it. In the comments or email about including something in future posts.

Whatever the Future Brings: Check out Wired’s post on Michael Wesch‘s presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum (a social networking media conference). According to the oracles of all things electronic, Wesch’s talk on how to get people’s attention in an age of mass distraction got a standing ovation at the conference.

The Forest Has Eyes (and Possibly Land Claims): Rory Carrol at the Guardian wrote a provocative article at the Guardian UK about the Peruvian government’s claims that there are no ‘uncontacted’ tribes in their section of the Amazon, the indigenous groups and activists who are claiming that there are, and the anthropologists who are hedging their bets.

A Reductionist’s Guide To Life Choices: For those of you who don’t listen to the NPR podcast called “Planet Money,” here’s some advice. Do listen. The hosts often have non-traditional perspectives on the U.S. economy, society and the current fiscal crisis. This Friday was an amusing exception. The podcast invited Tim Harford, an economist who offered humorous rational choice models to help his blog readers figure out if their spouse is cheating or whether a couple should enter an open relationship. All in all a comical point of entry into how economists think. But if you’re thinking about following his advice, don’t.

In Memoriam: I ran across two very well-done obituaries this week. The first was an article in the Boston Globe recalling the career Helen Codere, an ethnographer of the U.S. Pacific Northwest who elaborated on the potlach and edited a selection of Boas’s work called simply Kwakiutl Ethnography. On her experience as a female ethnographer in the 1940s-1960s, the Boston Globe wrote:

Dr. Codere, who never married, pointed out that in the field, “Single women lack some of the freedom and mobility of single men; they are objects of even greater curiosity and scrutiny in a world in which going two by two is projected.’’

The Guardian UK wrote also wrote an obituary of medical anthropologist Cecil Helman.  A brief exerpt:

Cecil’s work with traditional healers, especially in Brazil and South Africa, allied to 27 years’ experience as a GP in the NHS and a period as a ship’s doctor, helped him to develop an original and illuminating approach to the complexities of healthcare provision in multicultural populations.

Profoundly Meaningless (Yes Yes Yes):  Mother Jones blog reports on the closing of the last keffiyeh factory in Palestine.  According to Mama J, hipsters have underwritten the boom of cheaper keffiyeh production in China.  [Thanks to hawgblawg for finding this story].

Zombeconomics:  Worried about the shrinking global economy and the over population of over qualified professionals?  Overthinkingit.com has the solution.  One major outbreak of zombie attacks would both thin out the world population, and, once controlled with biotechnology, become a cheap source of labor.  Makes sense to me.

The Public Anthropology Public: Daniel Lende wrote two posts on neuroanthropology this week on public anthropology.  The first purports to be a review of Rob Borofosky’s explanation of Public Anthropology, but it is much more.  The post assembles various perspectives and multimedia interviews and examples of public anthropology.  In the second post, Lende compiles a list of further resources for people interested in deeper exploration.

Hey, Hey, Hey, I’ve Got It (World Cup Fever): Well, actually, I was gay-vaccinated against the fever before first going to Brazil in 2002.  (They won that year, and I hid from the hours of fireworks).  But others have the fever.  Material World posted on Lynn Jarvis’s Homeless World Cup, and Language Log explores the reported origins of the vuvuzela, a South African horn played at soccer matches.  (yes, i said it, soccer).

Sugar and Spice: Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily posted a very just critique of a recent article from the Archives of Sexual Behavior, claiming that infant girls were more attracted to pictures of dolls while infant boys were drawn to pictures of toy trucks.  Perhaps the post should have been titled, ‘babies socialized into gender roles really f’in early.’

Ok, I promised myself that this week would be MJ free, but this post at Language Log reached down and tapped my inner-child-ethnomusicologist.  Benjamin Zimmer tells a compelling tale about the Cameroonian origins of Jackson’s line ‘ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa,’ and in the process the globalization and transnational consumption of popular music.  Wanna be startin’ somethin’ indeed.

Is there an Anthropologist in the House? Daniel Goldberg at Medical Humanities Blog, posted his plea for more medical anthropologists in clinical settings. Self-professedly a fan but not practitioner of anthropology, Goldberg suggests that medical anthropologists would be a valuable addition (if not replacement?) for clinical medical ethicists. He writes:

I have often wondered how different my local world would be if it were anthropologists in charge of designing, implementing, and teaching cultural humility, instead of the relatively thin but conventionally dominant and poorly named “cultural competence.

Reform at a Distance: In A recent New York Times Op-Ed , contributor Nassrine Azimi on suggests that Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is an oldie-but-goodie model for people to think holistically about demographic and educational challenges currently facing Japan.

You Can’t Say That in Science! Language Log has a plea for action regarding a libel lawsuit against British science journalist Simon Singh. Singh is currently fighting a lawsuit brought from the the British Chiropractic Association, claiming that Singh’s challenges to the validity of certain claims of chiropractics lack demonstrable evidence constitute intent to defame the Association. Perhaps more interesting than the case itself has been the response from various public interest groups claiming that free speech is necessary to scholarly practices of critique. The comments to this post also raise some interesting views.

Biopower at the Limits: Thanks to Somatosphere for linking to a new blog post by Paul Rabinow discussing his research collective’s conceptual work on synthetic anthropos–an emergent constellation of effects and propositions borne out over the struggle between the figures of biopower and human dignity. Or something to that effect. Eugene Raikhel’s somatosphere post has some interesting views on this as well.

In Memoriam [Updated 6/16/09]: Stephen Christomalis at Glossographia has a great tribute to Willard Walker, recently deceased linguistic anthropologist and expert in (the admittedly specific field of) Cherokee numerals indigenous literacy in the Americas, most specifically the Cherokee syllabary.  In all cases, a really interesting description of one scholar’s life’s work.

As always, feel free to write in or post any other news.

This week’s roundup is a choose-your-own adventure.  About half of the things I found interesting this week seemed to be about online communication, and a there was lot on facebook.  So, those of you who get bored with all the techno-modern exoticism can just skip to the second half, which is all about established scholars making news.  And, of course, you can leave comments or email me with other stories for next week.  

“I Can Log Off Any Time.”   Daniel Lende at neuroanthropology has been posting his students’ final projects for a class he taught on the anthropology of substance abuse.  One of the projects on Internet addiction is a pretty interesting synthesis of how increasing online use is changing behaviors as well as normative attitudes towards internet use (like the potential inclusion of Internet addiction in the upcoming DSM V).  In other news, Jon Witt at Sociocultural Images wrote a small piece on the Oregon extension, a one-semester college sequence where students and faculty form an unwired intellectual community.  (But that doesn’t mean it can’t have a facebook page).  

Gifts in Our Times: Claudia Dreifus at the  New York Times interviewed Pauline Wiessner about her 30-year research relationship with !Kung communities and the changing patterns of !Kung social networks in a globalizing world. When asked if she saw any contemporary analogues to !Kung storytelling and gift exchange, Weissner answered, “Facebook.”  She continues:

One constantly hears stories of people finding jobs and business opportunities through these sites. Hey, and what does a blogger do? Tell stories! The videos and snapshots that people post echo the exchange gifts of the !Kung. They are a kind of token that says, “I’ve kept you in my heart.” 

Voice from Nowhere: Over at Language Log, Eric Bakovic wrote on the ways users adapt to changing syntax structure of the facebook user status update.  Bakovic notes that, while some users communicated and mobilized around changing the format of the update, other users simply ignored the conventions of the genre and used the status update as a quotation rather than a declarative sentence.  

New at the Institute:  Eugene Raikhel at Somatosphere commented on Didier Fassin’s appointment at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.  Raikhel ponders whether this will encourage more of Fassin’s work to be translated into English, and if this appointment and Ian Hacking’s election to the College de France marks the beginning of a new intellectual cosmopolitanism.

New Works: Lorenz at anthropologi.info found this recent online interview with Benedict Anderson on Anderson’s recent work on the forgotten body of work of Chinese-Indonesian journalist Kwee Thiam Tjing, the uneveness of power, cosmopolitanism from below, and the value of theory.  

To me, theorizing is like watching a drop of water: you can see the water and that’s all it is, a drop of water. But the minute you actually bring a microscope in, it’s completely different. Theory is really good at a sort of long-distance framing, but how people live their lives is something else, and I’m personally more interested in that than abstract theorizing.

New Collective on the Block:  Anthropologi.info and Teaching Anthropology have both linked to Keith Hart’s new venture, Open Anthropology Cooperative, hosted by Ning, allows for online fora, blog posts, etc.

We’re All Sick…of hearing doomsday reports on the H1N1 virus (well, I suppose there enough of us who enjoy bad theater). Luckily, the folks at both Somatosphere and Medical Humanities Blog have given us good synopses why all we all need to get a grip. Daniel Goldberg at MHB reminds us of the political dangers and the basic ineffectiveness of trying to identify a “patient zero.” Meanwhile Erin Koch (somatosphere) discusses the systemic problems in agroindustry that created the conditions for a massive outbreak. And in a followup, Erin wrote a brief piece on the various ways organizations and individuals have started to track the spread of the virus.

May Day, Marx, and Economic Mayhem: On the subject of futile searches for patient zero, Leo Panitch wrote an article imagining what Marx would say about the current global economic crisis. Panitch concludes by reminding us that Marx would not try to pinpoint specific causes of a crisis, but the inherent inequalities within capitalism.

Privacy and the Public Justice: Seems like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia just can’t get enough of his own medicine. Who could forget in 2005 when an NYU lawstudent (and my highschool classmate) asked Scalia if he practiced sodomy with his wife? This past month, Fordham law professor Joel Reidenberg put Scalia’s out of hand dismissal of the need to protect private information to the test–he assigned his students to find all the private information on Scalia. Scalia, a bit miffed, called Reidenberg’s assignment legal but irresponsible. You can read a partial response by Reidenberg at Feminist Law Professors blog. Too bad Reidenberg isn’t on Slate’s reader poll on who should join Scalia on the bench. Write in campaign?

Science’s New Hope: Barack Obama’s address to the National Academy of Sciences have left the bloggers at Discover Magazine’s Cosmic Variance speechless. You can see the president’s speech on the Academy’s website.

Altruism On Wheels: Pamthropologist first linked to this student art project in New York on tweenbots–simple robots that rely on human interaction to navegate (and narrate) the city. Tweenbots creator Kacie Kinzer writes:

In New York, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.

See some of the preliminary results:

Methods and Ethics: L.L. Wynn over at Culture Matters posted a fabulous description of the work she’s done creating an anthropology ethics training website at her home university. Like most anthropologists, Wynn is concerned with getting beyond the biomedical model of patient consent, and her comments on sex in the field, working with violent criminals, and protecting information sound more like conversations (or at least calls for conversations) than either normative or transgressive pronouncements. The Site itself is licensed under Creative Commons, and Wynn encourages readers to take, tweak and cite her training models. Also see a review of the site at the Institutional Review Blog.

The Other Side of Ethics: Christopher Beam at Slate explores the ethics of another cousin to ethnography…journalism. Beam writes on the father of the Slumdog Millionaire child star who reportedly offer to sell his child to a journalist posing as a rich sheik. But Beam focuses his scrutiny on the journalist, asking just what reporters are allowed to conceal about their identity to the people they investigate.

What Comes After ‘No.’ Wendy Laura Belcher at insidehighered.com offers advice on resubmitting articles after they’ve been rejected from the first, second, or tenth journal. Belcher outlines different strategies and suggests that hearing ‘no’ (or interpreting the different shades of no), can help scholars rewrite or retune their work. Or one can just forgo closed journals altogether and go…

Open Access…All the Time: As Lorenz at antropologi.info first noticed, there are two proposals for upcoming open access anthro blogging days. Sara at Sara Anthro Blog has run a series of posts calling for an open access May Day. And, on his other site, Open Anthropology, Kerim announced the expansion of last years Open Access Day to Open Access Week in October. Of course, no harm in celebrating them both, since every day (and week) should be an open access one.

Failed States, Failed Stories: Maximillian Forte at Open Anthropology writes on the collapse of the NATO master narrative in Afghanistan. Forte takes to task NATO officials as well as member governments for their blind praise of democratizing Afghanistan and anxieties over a Shia marriage law about which they rely upon vague descriptions to form their arguments.

This Week In Weird: Ashton Kutcher, twitter, mosquito nets in Africa.

Queer Search Patterns Afoot on Amazon.com:  Buzz is that Amazon.com has implemented an algorithm to remove ‘adult’ books from its sales rankings.  Apparently, Amazon has categorized many books with ‘sex’ in the title or keywords to be ‘adult,’ garnering the ire of the Erotic Writer’s association, and also adversely affecting gender, sexuality and LGBT categorized books. According to Publisher’s Weekly, Amazon has described the pattern as a ‘glitch,’ and declared that there is ‘no adult policy.’  Other authors have reported that Amazon employees told them their books had been tagged, or that Amazon employees were caught by surprise by this new (non?) policy.  People are also beginning to organize against Amazon.  

Protests at University of Vermont:  UVM students, faculty, and staff are become increasingly agitated over the administrations proposed budget cuts, which include one hundred and seven lectureship contracts that will not be renewed for the 2009-2010 school year.  

Time for Money: Commenting on recent rumblings that U.S. federal funding agencies like NSF will begin to evaluate how to make their funding more conducive to qualitative research in the social sciences, danah boyd at apophenia questions just what money qualitative researchers actually need.  boyd suggests that the obsession with getting grants to prove your merit does not always improve scholarship and takes away from other activities like teaching.  

Body of Literature:  Euguene Raikhel at Somatosphere collected a number of resources and created a list of recommendations for Teaching Anthropology of the Body.  

In Memoriam: Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, author of Epistemology of the Closet (which currently doesn’t have a sales ranking at Amazon) passed away last night.  She is already missed.  (Also see Duke U Press’s press release).