2008-12-27

audio from the National Museum of the American Indian

http://www.nmai.si.edu/subpage.cfm?subpage=collaboration&second=radio
 

Recordings   |   Contact NMAI  |   Links to Native American radio and web productions

Lisa Telford and Keevin Lewis
Audio recordings are an essential means of communication and collaboration between the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), Native and indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere and Hawai'i, and the general public. Recordings are supported at the NMAI by the Community and Constituent Services Department. The department's staff works with Native and indigenous organizations and professionals to produce audio programs, products, and services that are informative, educational, and entertaining. At the same time, NMAI recordings uphold a long tradition of preserving Native oral history. The NMAI offers live radio broadcasts, audio recordings, and a radio series.

2008-12-19

new web-based documentary video source

Introducing FOCAL POINT
The new web-exclusive series of documentary shorts from WIDE ANGLE
 
In its first weeks, FOCAL POINT, the new online exclusive series of documentary shorts from Wide Angle, will bring viewers to polling stations in Pakistan, breadlines in Zimbabwe, and demonstrations in Greece, where the children of immigrants are fighting for the right to citizenship.
The first episode of FOCAL POINT, From Jihad to Rehab, takes us inside a rehabilitation center in Saudi Arabia, where art therapy and religious re-education are being used to reform militant jihadists.
 
Like Wide Angle, FOCAL POINT offers a deeper understanding of forces shaping the world today through online-exclusive documentary shorts, an increasingly popular medium. This exciting new series will showcase the work of emerging and established independent filmmakers from around the world.

2008-12-13

anthro education the Social Web 2.0 way

A concerted effort through the Anthropology Education Committee at the American Anthropological Association is underway to gathering teaching plans and materials at http://anthroed.wikispaces.com with discussions at http://anthroed.ning.com and link-favorites at http://del.icio.us/anthroed - Thanks to Colleen P. for making this happen!
 
And a bank of images and video clips is growing for classroom uses at http://k12anthro.wikispaces.com as well.

blog, "Language Scraps"

Lots of insights from a person working between English and Thai,

2008-12-11

ethnosnacker - nibbling on anthropology in daily life

excerpted from

Anthropologist About Town

Diary for 11th December to 17th December 2008

SUNDAY 14TH DECEMBER - Snacking on Ethnography

On Sunday I'll be browsing the interweb and viewing some of the work of a cyber-anthropologist who goes by the name of Ethnosnacker. Using his own youtube channel, he aims to "expose, breakdown and reconstruct ethnographic research or commercial anthropology for those who want to understand it better". His work is an interesting example of how anthropology is increasingly 'used' for commercial purposes. There is plenty of debate about whether this is an appropriate use for the discipline - his view seems to be that ethnography is suitable in any situation where it can help bring meaning to an event or activity....You can watch a introduction to the site here, as well as several interviews that both support and question his work.

2008-11-12

hobbit-sized human ancestor in Indonesia

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hobbit/ concludes with the idea that a direct descendant of 'Lucy' (australopithicus) may have lived until as recently 12,000 years ago!

2008-11-08

indigenous visual depictions; self-awareness

about indigenous media research:

Postma, M. and P. I. Crawford (eds.)(2006), Reflecting Visual Ethnography, Leiden & Hoejbjerg: CNWS Publications & Intervention Press.

Philipsen, H.H. and B. Markussen (eds.), Advocacy and Indigenous Filmmaking, Hoejbjerg: Intervention Press

Aaron Glass' work about a traditional dance of one of the NW coastal indigenous groups in North America; also with W. Osman about her film in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan. PDF version of the Anthropology News (vol.47/no.9 =November 2008) at anthrosource.net The interviewer/author is Dinah Winnick.

Worth & Adair's Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology

Hoque, Abdul (2006) Radio and indigenous peoples. The role of radio in the sustainable livelihoods of indigenous peoples: A case study of the Rakhaing and the Garo people in Bangladesh. University of Tromso.

PamelaWilson and Michelle Stewart (eds) Global indigenous media: culture,politics and poetics

2008-10-25

Doing Anthropology (MIT video, 8 minutes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk3-no1foTE
 
Thoughts on Fieldwork From Three Research Sites
Cultural Anthropology is a social science that explores how people understand - and act in - the world. But what, exactly, is it that Cultural Anthropologists do? How do they approach their research? In this short film,

2008-10-24

visual approach to understanding life in Japan

http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/

2008-10-23

language & culture - K.David Harrison's book

P 40.5 .L33 H37 2007 Harrison, K. David. When Languages Die.
The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge.
London: OUP.
_______________
13 The world's 6.34B people speak, at latest count, 6,912 languages. If speakers were divided evenly among languages, each tongue would have 917,000 speakers... The top 10 biggest languages have hundreds of millions of speakers each, accounting for just over 50% of humans. If we expand this set to include the top 83 languages, we have covered nearly 80% of the world's population.

35 mankind... classifying, grouping, and describing plant and animal life, behavior, and usefulness to humans. Scientists refer to this practice as taxonomy: naming individuals and groups, sorting things into groups, discovering relations among them.
 
57 [reindeer words] Dongur. It is a powerful word. It means 'male domesticated reindeer in its third year and first mating season, but not ready for mating', and it allows a tribe of nomadic reindeer herders in Siberia to identify and describe with a single word what would otherwise require a full sentence.
 
58 ...uncle may be a mother's brother, or a mother's sister's husband, or perhaps just his parents' adult male friend. While our mind readily grasps the various types of 'uncle', English provides no ready-made, unique labels to distinguish them. Conversely, in cultures like Tofa with more socially important kinship relations, there exists no general word for 'uncle'. Five different type of uncles would have five completely different labels. By simply learning these labels, the child implicitly learns that these are distinct kinship roles. [unique identifiers]
 
146 [Walter Ong] Language s so overwhelmingly oral that of all the many thousands of languages --possibly tens of thousands-- spoken in the course of human history only around 106 have ever been committed to writing to a degree sufficient to have produced literature, and most have never been written at all. Of the some 3,000 languages spoken that exist today only some 78 have a literature...
...what it means to be a purely oral, non-literature culture. No grocery lists, no letters or e-mails, no memos, no text messages on cell phones, no books, no report cards, [no junk mail, direct mail, bills, email], no instructions on how to assemble artificial Christmas trees, no owner's manuals, no dictionaries, no newspapers, no libraries. This is the *normal* state of affairs for most human languages. [and therefore societies]
 
210 Rotokas (spoken in New Guinea by 4,320 people) reportedly gets by with a mere six consonants: p, t, k, v, r, and g, while Ingush a language of the Caucasus (230,000 speakers) boasts a whopping 40 consonants. Besides many common sounds like 'p', 'b', and 'f', Ingush uses a special series of ejective consonants that are produced by closing and raising the vocal chores to compress air inside the pharynx, then releasing the pressure suddenly to create a popping sound to accompany the consonant. Ejectives are moderately rare, occurring in only about 20% of the world's languages. To employ *seven* distinct kinds of ejectives, as does Ingush, is exceedingly rare. But even Ingush is not the upper limit: Ubykh, which reportedly had 70 consonants, lost its last speaker in 1992.
     ...Ingush appears more complex, allowing multiple consonants to sit next to each other, for example, bw, hw, ljg, and rjg: bwarjg 'eye'   hwazaljg 'bird'
 
==NOTES to text
243 Russian and Polish and other languages have a term that means "a whole 24 day," while English lacks this word.
246 [seven day week/calendar] first came into use in ancient Babylon, but a 10-day week was adopted by the Mayan Empire, and some Bantu civilizations in Africa adopted a six-day week.
261 [inventory of sign languages] ...about 700 sign languages in the final count
 
== urls:
p237> Lenape words (Deleware; Delaware), www.delawaretribeofindians.nsn.us. Talking dico, www.talk-lenape.com
p246 Halkomelem elders; folkbiology, www.sfu.ca/halk-ethnobiology [NW coast]
p249 [Baltic: Karaim chanting prayers/religion ceremonies online] www.karaimi.home.pl/index/php?p=4
AND   http://daugenis.mch.mii.lt/karaimai/literature1.htm
p250 [video clip] http://tuvan.swarthmore.edu
p256 www.ethnologue.com >population estimates for many languages; e.g. India's many languages
p270 Myth: Signs are glorified gestures. Online at http://facstaff.gallaudet.edu/harry.markowicz/asl/myth4.html.
p278 Hawaiian Dictionary. Online at http://wehewehe.org/gsdl2.5/cgi-bin/hdict?l=en
  Hillis, David M, Derrick Zwickl, and Robin Gutell 2003. Tree of Life. Online at http://www.zo.utexas.edu/faculty/antisense/Download.html. Accessed January 2006. [As published in Science 300: 1692-1697]
  Kiesling, Scott F. 2004. Dude. American Speech 79(3): 281-305.
  Medin, Douglas L., and Scott Atran 1999. Folkbiology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
  Nettle, Daniel, and Suzanne Romaine 2000. Vanishing Voices: The extinction of the world's languages. New York: OUP. [ch.3 "Lost Words - Lost Worlds"]
  Weisstein, Eric W. 2005. Base In MathWorld - A Wolfram Web Resource. Online at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Base.html. Accessed August 2006.
 
==ALSO
Ironbound Films, "The Last Speakers" (Siberia documentary).
National Geographic project on endangered languages.
Living Tongues Inst for Endangered Languages
podcast, The World of Words, www.theworld.org/languages

2008-10-04

theme issue, White Privilege and Schooling

Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Volume: 39, Number: 3 (9/2008)
online from AnthroSource at http://www.anthrosource.net/toc/aeq/39/3 
[subscription required for Web access]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction to Theme Issue: White Privilege and Schooling, guest editor Douglas Foley
http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1548-1492.2008.00018.x

2008-10-01

anthro museum online presentations

Anthropologist About Town

Diary for 2nd October to 8th October 2008

MONDAY 6TH OCTOBER - Online museum

Another website to browse today, which aims to bring the ethnographic collections of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter to a wider audience. It contains a number of interactive tools, including the opportunity to (electronically) have a go at playing a Burmese xylophone, or to create your own Polynesian barkcloth. The material is aimed at varying age groups, but all is very accessible and pretty varied in its subject matter. So for those of you not lucky enough to live besides the seaside in Exeter then it's well-worth a few hours of your time - you can view a list of subjects already online here.

youth produced ethnographic film, 'Anglesea Road'

...the film 'Anglesea Road' on youtube... It was made as part of visual anthropology project between the Royal Anthropological Institute and a college in South East London, where a group of 16-19 year-olds made a mini-ethnographic film about their local area, and takes a look at a street which has a large Somali population, and what the area means to them.

2008-09-19

review of traveling exhibit, RACE - Are We So Different?

Review Essay: RACE: Are We So Different?
Mischa Penn, Gregory Laden, Gilbert Tostevin
http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1548-1379.2008.00015.x
[subscription for online access required from library or individual]
 

2008-09-18

Britain Observed - cameras in *your* home?

Anthropologist About Town

Diary for 18th September to 24th September 2008

TUESDAY 23RD SEPTEMBER - Big Brother or Big Mother?

Normally I wouldn't mention reality television on the blog, but the latest offering from Channel 4 may be of slight interest for anthropologists. 'The Family' is a Big Brother-like format, where one ordinary family had cameras installed in their house for several months, and their daily lives were observed over a period of time. Amongst the children in the family is Charlotte, who is studying social anthropology for part of her International Baccalaureate (an alternative to A-levels) -perhaps she will bring some ethnographic insight on how the family functions?! According to this preview article, the programme is also a return to more responsible and in-depth observtional film-making, which means we may learn more about our own society than in most of the other exaggerated material on television. There is a website where you can view more resources, and you should be able to watch previous episodes on 4onDemand - it is broadcast otherwise at 21.00 on Wednesdays.

2008-08-08

insider - outsider

[weekly blog via London, http://anthropologistabouttown.blogspot.com]

Anthropologist About Town

Diary for August 7th to August 13th 2008


TUESDAY AUGUST 12TH - Strangers abroad

On Saturday I'll be putting my feet up and relaxing in front of 'The Thirties in Colour', a television series recently shown on BBC4 and now available to view online using the iplayer. It focuses on the first colour films made (only by by those wealthy enough to afford the expensive past-time), and how they saw the world around them, both domestically and in faraway places. Many of their observations are steeped in the perspective of the day, with a very superior view of the 'exotic tribes' they saw on their travels. Yet for the early images alone the films are fascinating for their representation of the interaction between westerners and indigenous peoples. For an alternative point of view, you could also try getting hold of 'Cannibal Tours', an excellent ethnographic film that investigates the prejudices of those who embark on invasive tourism - the film's tagline is "There is nothing so strange in a strange land, as the stranger who comes to visit it'.



2008-08-05

movies encompassing the planet

for a sense of the whole planetary scope of human activity (and its absence):
 
Matt Harding collected clips of his happy jigging all over the world.
This set this to music. A simple but powerful statement. It is hard not to smile.
  http://youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY
 
For anyone interested in geography, energy - water - air/space, and the places around the world, this Flash movie is vivid and powerful. www.greatdanepro.com/Blue%20Bueaty [that spelling error is part of the link]

2008-07-29

links page (Am.Anthro.Assoc)

http://www.aaanet.org/resources/links.cfm

article, Applying Anthropology to Teaching Anthropology

General Anthropology Bulletin Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring 2008

2008-07-05

language lore - alchemy of swearing

www.theworld.org/?q=node/16325 [February 28, 2008]

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with author Stephen Dodson. He's been studying languages -- and how to curse in them -- much of his life. Now he's co-authored a book called "Uglier Than a Monkey's Armpit: The Best Put-downs and Invective from Around the World."

--- see also, Dodson's blog, http://www.languagehat.com/ which includes an extensive list of links to other rich language-related resources. Look for the US edition of this book in summer 2009.

2008-07-01

video, Doing Anthropology (making it accessible; easy to visualize)

Mass. Inst. of Technology's Video Productions has created a new video called Doing Anthropology, to promote greater public understanding about cultural anthropology and the process of fieldwork. The video, which is housed on MIT TechTV (http://techtv.mit.edu/file/663/), is streamable and can be embedded into your personal blog or website.

2008-06-28

anthropology programming (TV broadcasts)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/archive/int_anth.html
gives thumbnail, individual website and resources for about 14 programs as of 6/2008

2008-06-26

tackling trash

http://www.justicetalking.org/viewprogram.asp?progID=668
webpage gives links to interview segments, related books, transcripts, action items

2008-04-22

archeology? Indiana Jones--Saving or Stealing History?

(radio story, Monday, 4/21/2008)

re-humanizing the wartime de-humanizing phenomenon

radio story about the visits to U.S. high school classrooms by former members of the WW II corps of kamikaze pilots (in conjuction with the documentary film's producer).
 
Wings of Defeat: Kamikaze Stories, Told in Person
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89622063&sc=emaf

2008-04-21

bio. anthro "e-skeleton" project

http://www.eskeletons.org/ gives 2D and 3D primate, including human skeletons

2008-04-18

ethno-doc website; Indigenous Knowledge Bank

from blog Anthropologist About Town - Apr 17, 2008

 

Indigenous knowledge

Following the film I saw yesterday I want to find out more about the different indigenous peoples of the world, so I'm going to browse the internet to see what I can discover. Anthropologists are often involved in the study of indigenous societies, and many work for organisations that campaign to uphold their rights. For example, The Peoples of the World Foundation is a group that highlights the lives of indigenous people using photography and film, in doing so hope to 'educate and enlighten' its vewers. Also worth checking out is Survival International, a non-governmental organisation that is often in the press for its work, most recently perhaps regarding their campaign to stop people referring to indigenous people as 'primitive'...and there are also many interesting films on their website from around the world.

Rounding up the week is the happy news today that Ethnodoc - the visual anthropology website - have just announced that all the their film content is now viewable online for FREE! In case you haven't read about Ethnodoc on the blog before, it's an Italian organisation that aims to link people interested in visual anthropology across the globe, providing photographs, films and articles on visual material free of charge - once you've signed up for free membership. It's a useful place to look at if you're interested in the subject, and also to research links to other similar organisations and hear the latest news about conferences and events.

2008-04-11

textbook - indigenous voices (authorship)

from Anthropologist About Town, http://anthropologistabouttown.blogspot.com
Diary for Thursday 10th April 2008

 

Tonight I'm going along to an event at the Blackwell's University bookshop in Oxford Brookes University. It's the launch of a new guide to social anthropology called 'An Introduction to Social Anthropology: Sharing our Worlds' which is one of variety of books out there that's useful for newcomers to the subject. Interestingly, sections of the text are written by indigenous people themselves, so we get a first-hand account of their concerns and beliefs. The author and anthropologist, Joy Hendry ( A Japan specialist) will also be on hand to talk about the book. If you want to find out more about her in advance you could listen to an episode of Radio 4's Excess Baggage that she appeared on last year, talking about the experience of conducting fieldwork. The book launch begins at 17.00 and the shop is located on Gipsy Lane in the Headington area of Oxford - to attend you will need to contact jhendry@brookes.ac DOT uk

2008-04-01

Material culture as window on Consumer life

The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the
underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff
exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social
issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. 
http://www.storyofstuff.com/

2008-03-22

Indigenous node within WWWeb

http://www.cwis.org/wwwvl/indig-vl.html

General Indigenous Studies Resources
Indigenous Resources for Africa
Indigenous Resources for Asia and the Middle East
Indigenous Resources for Central & South America
Indigenous Resources for Europe
Indigenous Resources for North America
Indigenous Resources for the Pacific

2008-03-05

teens & ethnographic filming (UK)

...short documentary made by A-Level students from S.E. London who took part in an ethnographic film workshop. Details,
 
CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES ON FILM, www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk
An evening of documentary short film screenings by visual anthropologists, exploring the experiences of children in India, Ethiopia and Malawi, separated from their parents and finding imaginative ways to create homes for themselves.

_______Films to be shown:
<> Street Fiction
 Malawi 2002 (32 minutes) Filmmaker and anthropologist: Dominic Elliot.
Through combining their own dramatic reconstructions and real life observation, this film tells the story of the Malawian children who run away from their homes in search of a better life on the streets of Blantyre.  As the children act out a fiction based on their own experiences, we also follow the work of MacDonald, a social worker whose hope it is to return them to their homes.
<> Ravi and Bhajay
 India 2002 (26 minutes) Filmmaker and anthropologist: Rachel Webster.
An intimate and uplifting exploration of the lives of street children Ravi and Bhajay as they survive together on the streets of Mumbai.  To get away from it all they visit the holy city of Vijain with the film-maker.  Despite being offered jobs and schooling if they stay in Vijain the attraction of the streets is too great and Ravi and Bhajay choose to return to Mumbai to be among their friends.  The film shows how two street boys create a life for themselves on the streets of Mumbai based around friendship.
<> Room 11: Ethiopia Hotel
 Ethiopia 2006 (21 minutes)  Filmmaker and anthropologist: Itsushi Kawase.
This film aims to capture a sense of the life of children living on the street in Gondar by witnessing the interaction between two children and the film-maker.  Although it is about the children's life on the streets, the entire film was shot in the film-maker's room in the Ethiopia Hotel.  This limited space allows the film to focus on communication between subjects and film-maker and to reveal some of the ideas that enable them to endure and survive on the streets.
<> Pride of Place
 Dorothea Gazidis & Kim Longinotto 1976 (59 minutes)
A rarely since classic by Kim Longinotto takes a dark look at the boarding schools she ran away from as a teenager.  Preceded by short film: The Good Ol' Days by students from Greenwich Community College.
<> The New Boys
 David MacDougall 2003 (100 minutes)
Filmmaker David MacDougall follows a group of new boys during their first term at the "Eton of India," capturing their conflicts and friendships, jokes and loneliness.   Preceded by short film Talk of the Trade by students from Greenwich Community College.
<> SchoolScapes
 David MacDougall 2007 (77 minutes)
MacDougall continues his exploration of schools life at the progressive Rishi Valley School in India, founded by the philosopher Krishanmurti.  Preceded by short film Anglesea Road: Mini Somalia by students from Greenwich Community College.
 
RAI - Our Education Programme
The Royal Anthropological Institute's Education programme Discover Anthropology has been set up to develop actions and strategies to inform teachers and young people about anthropology as a university subject, and to bring the subject more generally into pre-university education. Anthropology, the study of what it means to be human across different societies, cultures and histories, is not currently taught in schools and colleges in the UK and compared to other social sciences anthropology undergraduate degrees attract fewer students from widening participation target groups. Yet the discipline of anthropology has a distinctive, and vital, contribution to make to understanding the world today. Anthropology offers a deep understanding of how different societies work, how people live, what are their beliefs, customs, ideas, prejudices and aspirations.  In an era when global understanding and recognition of diverse ways of seeing the world are of critical social, political and economic importance, anthropology has a central role to play in education.
  "Anthropology is concerned with the whole of life and is not just something you do until 6 o'clock. The study of anthropology encourages you to have a new kind of consciousness of life; it is a way of looking at the world and in that sense it is a way of living," Anthropologist David Pocock, Discovering Anthropology: a resource guide.  The electronic version of Discovering Anthropology is available free on-line here. 
  The Discover Anthropology education programme aims to 1) provide good quality accessible information for students considering studying anthropology at university 2) to create a series of regular events and activities for young people and teachers and 3) produce resources for teachers that draw upon the insights of anthropology. The programme will be represented by a dedicated website shortly. From 2005-2006 the programme was funded through the AimHigher National Activity programme.  From 2007-2010 the programme will be funded by the Economics and Social Research Council.
  Contact Nafisa Fera, Education Officer, for more details: +44 (0)20 7387 0455.

2008-03-03

anthro of sport

[via 28 feb 2008 anthropologistabouttown.blogspot.com]
 
anthropology and sport interest you as a subject you could look into the B.A. in Sport at Durham University, which includes anthropology modules[http://www.dur.ac.uk/sass/staff/profile/?id=4297 ].
There are also a couple of good introductory texts [http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859731457/ref=nosim/londanthday-21 ] on the subject, looking at how sport impacts upon culture, politics, economics and identity, to name but a few...

2008-02-27

Languages of the World

http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/
Language plays a unique role in capturing the breadth of human diversity. We are constantly
amazed by the variety of human thought, culture, society, and literature expressed in many thousands of languages around the world. We can find out what people think only through their language. We can find out what they thought in the past only if we read their written records. We can tell future generations about ourselves only if we speak or write to them. If we want other civilizations in space to learn about us we send them messages in dozens of our planet's six thousand languages.
 
The main purpose of this website is to provide information about the language families of the world
and their most important and populous members, including their history, status, their linguistic
characteristics, and their writing in as simple and concise a way as possible. We base this website
on the belief that all languages have evolved from the need of human beings to express their thoughts, beliefs, and desires, that all languages meet the social, psychological, and survival needs of people who use them. In this sense, all languages, no matter how small and remote, are equal. All equally deserve study because all of them provide valuable insights into human nature.

2008-02-24

language - plain, please

US Gov't, http://www.plainlanguage.gov/
Worldwide, http://www.plainlanguage.gov/community/world.cfm

2008-02-12

NPR.org - With Climate Swing, a Culture Bloomed in Americas

g thought you would be interested in this story: NPR: With Climate Swing, a Culture Bloomed in Americas
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18888119&sc=emaf

This message was included:

New World civilization c. 3000 BCE

2008-01-25

humor culture; medicine culture

blog items from Anthropologist About Town (London based collection of events and observations)
 
...the Southbank Centre for a new exhibition called 'The Culture of Laughing' that opens today and runs until mid-April [2008]. Using a hilarious combination of video, photography and interactive exhibitions, the collection investigates whether humour is transferable across cultures. With 30 artists from all over the world contributing, the curator argues that whilst laughter is universal, humour is socially specific -and wants visitors to see if they can find amusement on foreign jokes without specific social knowledge.
 
...new series on Channel 4 called Medicine Men Go Wild. It follows two identical twin British doctors in their investigations of indigenous medicine in various different communities around the world. Despite the slightly silly title, the programme retains a good balance between respect for other cultural forms of medicine, and what they can contribute to western understanding... you should be able to download it soon on 4 on Demand.

2008-01-18

Underwater Archaeology Museum - Online Teaching Resources

...Museum of Underwater Archaeology (MUA). The MUA was created to encourage underwater archaeologists to use the Internet to share their research with the general public. Since our founding in 2004 avocational, graduate student, and professional archaeologists from around the world have used our site for public outreach and education. This includes full scale exhibits, brief reports, and online project diaries written by graduate students participating in field schools.
...As we can not travel to every school we recently created a kit that we are now making available to educators from around the world that allows teachers to conduct a hands on training session on underwater archaeology. It includes a CD with ten documents including a lesson plan that guides the teacher through the exercise.
...Our first two paths, for ages 10-12 and 16-17, are now online.
...the entire site which contains exhibits and posts on projects in the United States, Japan, the UK, Australia, and France. 

 T Kurt Knoerl, Director, The Museum of Underwater Archaeology, http://www.uri.edu/mua

2008-01-17

UK ethnobotany; Fashion from anthro lens

from anthropologistabouttown.blogspot.com
19TH JANUARY - Green fingers on the radio
Today I'll be listening again to an episode of anthropologists' favourite 'Thinking Allowed' [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/thinkingallowed/thinkingallowed_20071219.shtml] that was broadcast on Channel 4 before Christmas. It featured two anthropologists, Roy Ellen [ http://www.kent.ac.uk/anthropology/department/staff/ellen.html] and Simon Platten [ http://www.kent.ac.uk/anthropology/department/staff/platten.html], who are about to embark on a three year study on the 'ethnobotany of the British garden'. The importance of a finely pruned hedge to the inner workings of British society has, according to them, been long overlooked. It has even been argued, apparently, that the national obsession with gardening is a reason for the calmness of the British temperament! Like all good 'reflexive' anthropology, this programme should begin to make us question an area of our lives that is usually ignored as simply 'normal'...

21ST JANUARY - The catwalk of anthropology
Come Monday I will be looking for new ways to strut my anthropological stuff in the new collection from fashion designer Chayalan. A little random, but the Cypriot fashionista claims inspiration from 'current anthropology', as well as a host of other disciplines including migration and the philosophy of science. He wants his clothes to be seen as a part of culture, and not just an elite artistic world. Which is presumably why he has added signature drop pockets to his jeans... To read more about anthropology and fashion [ http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?ie=UTF8&keywords=Anthropology&rh=n%3A267854%2Ck%3AAnthropology&page=1 ], why not check out this article [http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?ie=UTF8&keywords=Anthropology&rh=n%3A267854%2Ck%3AAnthropology&page=1 ].

2008-01-07

"the linguists" trailer for 2008 Sundance Film Fest

http://thelinguists.com/ (Greg Anderson, David Harrison)
ironbound films
cf. linguistically flavored work from www.cnam.com, The Center for New American Media


Share life as it happens with the new Windows Live. Start sharing!

2008-01-04

bbc2 "Tribe" series 1-2-3

[opening snippet] "What is Tribe to me?
"Tribe has been my whole world for the last four years and is the most important thing in my life right now. It's a series about people and culture, our culture as well as others. We hope it's entertaining, because we want people to watch and enjoy, especially people who wouldn't normally tune into this type of programme, but we also hope we can communicate something important about the world." [continues, http://www.bbc.co.uk/tribe/bruce/index.shtml]

outside the UK the video stream will be blocked, but clips may be viewable via Discovery Channel website