Category Archives: Site News

Information about updates, outages, design changes, and so forth.

Please welcome guest bloggers Joana Breidenbach and Nyiri Pal

Please welcome two new guest bloggers, Joana Breidenbach and Nyiri Pal!

Joana Breidenbach obtained her PhD in Cultural Anthropology in Munich in 1994.  Since 1992 she has written many books and articles on cultural globalisation, tourism and migration, including Tanz der Kulturen (The Dance of Cultures, with Ina Zukrigl, Munich: Kunstmann, 1998), a book that played a major role in introducing the issue of cultural globalisation into German public debates. She has been a columnist for the German business monthly brand eins and has published in journals as diverse as GEO and Current Anthropology. In 2007, she co-founded betterplace.org, an online market place for social initiative, where she heads the betterplaceLAB. She lives with her husband and two children in Berlin.

Nyíri Pál studied in Hungary, the U.S. and Russia. Most of his research has been on Chinese migration overseas; recently, he has been interested in contemporary Chinese ‘concessions’ overseas. He is Professor of Global History from an Anthropological Perspective at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. His most recent book, Mobility and Cultural Authority in Contemporary China, is coming out this spring from the University of Washington Press.

Seeing Culture Everywhere was written as a plea against the cultural determinism that is so common in today’s public debates, with the non-anthropologist reader in mind. The book traces the emergence of ‘culturalism’ (group cultural difference as an explanatory and normative paradigm) from international relations to the nation-state’s management of diversity and down to corporate trainings, suggesting reasons for the pervasiveness of this approach and advocating its replacement with an ethnographic perspective and practice.

I look forward to reading their posts and bid them a warm welcome!

Savage Minds Rewind: The Best of 2009

Everyone loves end of year reviews, even if they’re a couple days late. And we’re no exception. Here are some of the most popular posts, notable moments, and contributors’ favorites from the past twelve months.

SM picked up on the world of anthropology- from Dustin’s great post on Human Terrain in Oaxaca, Ethnic Studies Under Attack, Tom’s breakdown of the UK anthropology rankings, the burgeoning Open Anthropology Collective and even the youtube hit The Anthropology Song.

Rex gave advice to graduate students, offering them insight into what professors look for in applications, which he updated in December, told grant-seekers to read Michele Lamont’s How Professors Think, and suggested resources for preparing for fieldwork.

We stocked up on our popcorn, either to watch vividly or to throw it at the screen. Of course, the colonial, anticolonial, racist, liberatory, best thing since sliced bread, worst film ever Avatar got both Rex and Kerim going, but let us not forget that there have been other notable movies in the history of cinema. Rex reviewed the Librarian series…twice! Plus, where to find free documentary films online, Tristes Tropiques, and films for teaching anthropology.

Of course, online technologies constitute our media of choice, and SM had plenty to say about that. From Finding Anthropology on Twitter, to Virtual Worlds as Area Studies, to the profitability of social networking sites and a rereading of Imagined Communities in the digital and multinational age. Plus, Chris gave a rowsing, ‘the internet is dead, long live the internet’ cheer in recounting how his book has faired in the online creative commons.

This year, SM is it unethical to say something about someone that they cannot understand? And could the Henry Louis Gates affair be considered an American rorschach test on race? And there were plenty of opinions. Chris took a dressed-up call for the dismantling of the university to task, while Rex crowned the worst postmodern titlemaker. And Kerim compared Mendeley and other bibliographical tools.

We were lucky to have a number of great guest bloggers this year. Adam Fish wrote on celebrity journalists in North Korea, communes and online communities. Parvis Mahdavi contributed on her work on the sexual revolution in Iran. Anne Allison wrote about precarious socialities of Japanese youth. Ken MacLeish posted on the wounds of war and the dilemmas of stereotype. And Olumide Abimbola wrote pieces on consuming second hand clothing and anthropology in Nigeria.

Finally, we remembered the lives and contributions of Dell Hymes, Epeli Hau’ofa, and of course the one to whom we will always be in debt for our name, Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Welcome roving blogger Adam Fish

Adam Fish, a PhD student at UCLA is going to be doing a bit of guest blogging here at SM this summer. Adam describes himself as a new media producer and anthropologist of the creative industries. He’s worked as a documentary maker at CurrentTV on issues such as Iraqi and Bhutanese refugees, Native American tourism, Buddhist/Hindu religious land disputes, and the split cities of Belfast and Nicosia, Cyprus. He has promised to give us some insight into that place where economics and activism meet in citizen journalism and participatory culture. He’s travelling and will be in Cyprus, Israel, and Burning Man… blog on, Adam.

Occasional pieces on Jared Diamond and Daniel Wemp

Hello everyone — this is just a quick message to announce that Savage Minds will be working with Stinky Journalism, the site that first broke the Jared Diamond/Daniel Wemp story, to produce a series of essays on the affair. You’ll see more to come (including our first installment) over the next couple of weeks. I am really hoping SM will become a place where people can comment on and discuss some of the issues raised by the story.

Welcome Guest Blogger Loomnie

I’d like to welcome our new guest blogger, Olumide Abimbola who bloggs under the name Loomnie. Loomnie is a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany. He has a BA in Communication and Language Arts (Ibadan, Nigeria) and an MA in Development Studies (Uppsala, Sweden). His ongoing dissertation follows the international trade in second-hand clothing from the UK to Benin, and from Benin to Nigeria (the Nigerian government bans the importation of second-hand clothing).

During his stint as a guest blogging on Savage Minds Loomnie will be discussing commodities, things, and anthropology in present-day Africa.

Welcome Loomnie!

New Look

Things might get a bit weird for a few minutes while I update our site theme. Although we are very attached to the funky colors and flowers of Savage Minds, our theme is now showing its age – most notably it seems to be borking our Google search results and it is difficult to do simple things like easily update the sidebar. We wanted to get the new theme up and running to fix these problems – hopefully it won’t cause any new ones. If you do notice continued problems after the new theme is properly installed, please let us know in the comments on this thread. And feel free to share your praise, criticism, or requests here as well.

UPDATE: Done! Notice that the blogroll and categories are now located in the footer.

UPDATE: I’ve implemented changes which should fix some of the problems readers have mentioned. The changes are small, but hopefully the effects will be noticed in terms of readability and overall navigability. Let me know in the comments!

UPDATE:

Savage Minds Rewinds…The Best of 2008

As we ring in the new year, let’s take a fond look back at the SM posts that made you laugh, the ones that made you think, and the ones that didn’t do much for you at all but that we really like. Join us, won’t you?

The Issues: While anthropologists and the military and open access were again SM’s favorite causes, other events ‘out there’ made it onto the blog. Kerim wrote about violence in the Indian state of Rajasthan and its relation to denotified tribes. And how could we not talk about those uncontacted folks in Brazil, and the fact that they were not so uncontacted as first reported?

Savage Minds Invades AAAs: Taking San Francisco by storm hasn’t been so much fun since the 1970s. When AAA left Chris heartbroken over the lack of love on collaborating with AAA, he hatched a plan. Even though a glimmer of hope emerged that AAA had (maybe, in a kind of way) seen the light, we knew it was too good to be kinda true. So in November, while Montgomery McFate was busy avoiding her peers, the SM crew announced the winners of teh excellents blog.

Finding Anthropology: In the time honored tradition of anthropologists’ anxiety over their craft, some of the most popular posts this year have been about whether other disciplines do or don’t do ethnography/anthropology (and how well they do or don’t do it). In the spirit of equal opportunity, Rex decided to first piss off cultural studies proponents and then proclaim them the new anthropology. Chris was fascinated by the philosophers who actually talk to people. Other thoughts pondered… whether anthropology is a kind of connoiseurship, and the possible benefits to slow writing,

The Year in Reviews: Kerim’s dog Juno shared some thoughts on Donna Harraway’s When Species Meet. Strong asked whether the Wire is the best ethnograpy of the U.S. of our times? Both Kerim and Rex wrote reviews of Tom Boellstorff’s Coming of Age in Second Life, which prompted Boellstorff to post a response of his own. Speaking of reviewing your own book, Chris announced the birth of his new book, Two Bits. And we couldn’t have been prouder.

New Minds to the Fold: This year, we had some fantastic guest bloggers. Majorie Harness Goodwin wrote a response to a New York Times article on teasing. Jon Marks wrote on E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and other schumcks who speak for Darwinism. Culture Matters blogger Lisa Wynn jumped over to write a series of posts on reproductive health technologies in Egypt (posts 1, 2, 3, 4). Tom Boellstorff discussed his recent ethnographic work in Second Life. And last, but probably not least, yours truly brought you the topical, not so topical, inane and otherwise events around the web.

And, of course, the many other favorite posts that refuse categorization.

Stay tuned for more edge of your seat deep contemplation in 2009!

Savage Minds on Twitter

Apropos of Rex’s last post, I realized I’d been delinquent in my plans to set up a Savage Minds twitter feed for people who wish to follow the blog on Twitter. It is just a bot which posts our RSS feed to twitter, but it might be useful for some of you. Here’s the link.

I’m not going to defend Twitter. I happen to enjoy it, but then I still can’t figure out why people buy virtual property in Second Life… I do recommend this NY Times article to people who are trying to understand the Twitter phenomenon. And here is a piece about the role Twitter played in reporting on the Mumbai attacks.

At this year’s AAA in San Francisco I met up with at least four people whom I would probably not have seen were it not for Twitter. (At other conferences I’ve attended there is often some great backchannel discussion on Twitter. Unfortunately the AAA’s lousy WiFi service didn’t extend to the conference rooms.) If you’re on Twitter, feel free to follow me.

Introducing Guest Bloggers Lisa Wynn and Hosam Moustafa

This year’s winner for “most excellent blog” was Culture Matters; but even before the award contest we were thinking of ways we could highlight the excellent work being done there – as well as get a piece of the action ourselves. It was with that in mind that we invited Culture Matters blogger and frequent Savage Minds commentator Lisa Wynn to guest blog for us.

For her stint as a guest blogger Lisa suggested doing a series of posts on her new research project, which focuses on reproductive health technologies in Egypt. She also wanted to co-author the posts with her collaborator on this project, Hosam Moustafa. The posts will explore some of the complex methodological issues involved in negotiating research in Egypt, as well as the different technologies, and anecdotes ‘from the field’, etc. Short bios of Lisa and Hosam are below the fold.

Welcome Lisa and Hosam!

Continue reading →

Teh Savage Minds Awards Ceremony

With less than a week to go until the start of the AAA, and no time to properly pull this off, I hereby announce that we will be annoucing the winners of the 1st annual Savage Minds Awarding of teh Excellents Contest on Saturday evening at 6pm in the lobby of the Hilton. ( We’ll also make sure to announce where the party is at that point). Which means it’s time to VOTE!!!

I will be there with a bell and a whistle, or some other noise maker like a cute little girl, to draw attention to my stupid antics, at which point I will announcingly annouce the nominees and winners in three categories:

1) Most Excellent Anthropology Blog (Vote Here)
2) Most Excellent Open Access Journal in Anthropology(Vote Here)
3) Most Excellent Uncategorizable Digital Thing-a-ma-job for Anthropology (Vote Here)

As you will have noticed, the category I wanted to award something to–that of best OA article is gone. I will instead recite an impromtu Eulogy for the absense of Open Access research in our discipline. Or maybe not.

Prizes will range from signed and numbered copies of print-outs of Savage Minds posts (suitable for Framing!) to cases of Artic Man Deoderant to valuable caches of cowrie shells and dried beans.

A NOTE on the voting: I decided to use Mako Hill’s awesome Selectricity Tool. It allows you to calculate the vote in all kinds of ways so we can conceivably have many winners depending on how we count ! What better way to encourage cultural relativism! Go and Vote! Tell your friends.
Continue reading →

What would it mean to celebrate the Levi-Strauss centenary?

Here on Savage Minds we are gearing up for Levi-Strauss’s birthday. Strong has been posting LS quotes for the past few days, and we are hoping to get some high-octane people to talk about the event. All of this preparation, however, has really gotten me thinking about what it would mean to celebrate the Levi-Strauss centenary.

Who is Levi-Strauss to anthropologists today? In my experience students regard him with a mixture of awe and horror, amazed at his ability to channel massive amounts of intellectual energy into brain-twistingly complex analyses that seem, to them, radically removed from anything that matters. Even those of us who think of him as an important figure also think of him as a historic one. Can anthropologists who received their Ph.D.s after, say, 1980, boil with anger when Levi-Strauss sees women as tokens to be exchanged by men, or thrill at the way that his analyses of myth open new horizons for analysis? Could it be that hommage is just another way of saying that this work does not particularly matter to us any more?

I’m particularly worried by the American tendency to fetishize French thinkers — do we find Levi-Strauss fascinating just because he is old and kooky and French? Of course the French have been busy fetishizing him themselves — in Paris this summer LS’s upcoming birthday was covered in magazines and newspapers, and a new edition of his biography appeared in paper.

I don’t doubt that Levi-Strauss should be remember and celebtrated, even if celebration brings debate (I like debate, you may have noticed!). But I’m not quite sure, yet, what it would mean to celebrate the Levi-Strauss centenary. Are you?

…And we’re back up

The update is finished…. at least as far as I can tell… so we sold be rolling again. Please do not hesitate to blame me for any difficulty you may experience using the site in the near future.

Pardon our dust

Over the next few hours we will be updating our website software, so things may get strange. Hang in there we’ll be back soon.

Who Reads Savage Minds?

These numbers should all be taken with a very large grain of salt, but with 400 people voting in our poll, it seems like there are a lot of anthropology graduate students, professors and undergrad majors out there:

PollDaddy.com: Poll Results

The “other” category included librarians, editors, post-docs, medical professionals with anthropology training, and someone “living in sin with an anthropologist.”

PollDaddy.com: Poll Results

And here is a map of our visitors over the past week. The top 10 cities were: Chicago, Helsinki, New York, London, Washington, Montreal, Bloomington, Portland, Arlington, and Sydney. The top 10 languages were: English, German, Traditional Chinese, French, Finnish, Italian, Norwegian, Dutch, Spanish and Japanese.

Map Overlay - Google Analytics

During that week we had 3,502 “unique visitors” the site, about half of whom were newcomers. Half of you are using Firefox, 35% are still using IE for some reason, and 12% are using Safari. About 70% of you connected via broadband (cable, T1, or DSL), with about 2% still using dial-up.