November 26, 2009
November 25, 2009
Two completely random posts that happen to mention the American Anthropological Association
First up, check out the review of the AAA Blog by Rex over at Savage Minds:
"...it has managed to successfully put a face on our discipline’s professional organization that is both respectable and not boring: they track the appointment of AAA members to prestigious positions, they have a flickr photo stream of Indigenous Children In Authentic Textiles playing with iphones and laptops, announce grants, and so forth. Its an important niche in the anthropology noosphere that has finally been filled. So let’s give it up for the AAA blog—good job folks!"
Next, have a look at Max Forte's newest little ditty over at ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY:
"Innocently and just out of curiosity, I was asked by a colleague if I would be in Philadelphia. I asked in return: “Why? What’s in Philadelphia that should interest me?” Of course my colleague was simply referring to the upcoming annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, when whole departments in Canada lose their faculty to this annual pilgrimage to the centre of anthropological power, to catch some of the light of the American luminaries, and (unintentionally?) massaging the ego of the monster."
All comments and suggestions are appreciated.
"...it has managed to successfully put a face on our discipline’s professional organization that is both respectable and not boring: they track the appointment of AAA members to prestigious positions, they have a flickr photo stream of Indigenous Children In Authentic Textiles playing with iphones and laptops, announce grants, and so forth. Its an important niche in the anthropology noosphere that has finally been filled. So let’s give it up for the AAA blog—good job folks!"
Next, have a look at Max Forte's newest little ditty over at ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY:
"Innocently and just out of curiosity, I was asked by a colleague if I would be in Philadelphia. I asked in return: “Why? What’s in Philadelphia that should interest me?” Of course my colleague was simply referring to the upcoming annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, when whole departments in Canada lose their faculty to this annual pilgrimage to the centre of anthropological power, to catch some of the light of the American luminaries, and (unintentionally?) massaging the ego of the monster."
All comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Oaxaca, 2007
Oaxaca in 2007 was a pretty complicated experience. That's an understatement. I was little more than a bystander who was passing through, really. I was on the sidelines, and able to leave whenever I wanted. That's called "positionality" or something fancy like that. That means that I had the resources and power to cross borders at will, unlike many people in Oaxaca. I had no idea what to think of everything that was happening that summer--from the repressive acts of URO to the posters of Stalin that APPO put up in the zocalo. Stalin! Meanwhile, as URO tried to stifle dissent, and APPO claimed to be speaking for "the people," many surrounding communities suffered the dreaded fate of being caught somewhere in between. The tourism market went into a free-fall, and the craft producing communities that depended on tourists were seriously strained. The graffiti, murals, and stencils that were plastered all over the walls of Oaxaca city told plenty of stories, but they didn't encompass the entire ordeal by any means.November 24, 2009
2012 Circus at Archaeological Haecceities
For a good overview of the 2012 "phenomena," check out this post over at Archaeological Haecceities. Here is an excerpt:
Definitely worth reading through the whole post, just so you are well prepared for not only the movie, but the ensuing event itself. I'm expecting a Mesoamerican rehash of Y2K, or something like that. Make sure you buy your duct tape and canned food.
For a small but still growing group of people December 21, 2012 will be a fateful day. Several made up prophecies will not fulfill. Some of these people will probably say “never mind” and search for a new doomsday in some ancient text. Hopefully most people will feel betrayed and fooled. The market for books, websites, blogs and forums concerning 2012 authored by self proclaimed prophets and experts, along with good old Nostradamus, have increased tremendously, especially in the US. Most of these prophets make a living out of people’s search for the meaning of life or the wish for a better world. Ancient societies are ascribed several noble qualities and knowledge we are supposed to learn from. However, most of the prophets focus on people’s fear and emphasize the end of the world and appear in classy magazines like Playboy. But it is a Christian apocalypse these people visualize.
Definitely worth reading through the whole post, just so you are well prepared for not only the movie, but the ensuing event itself. I'm expecting a Mesoamerican rehash of Y2K, or something like that. Make sure you buy your duct tape and canned food.
November 23, 2009
Incidents of Travel in Chichén Itzá
This is a good example of the ways in which archaeological remains are understood, and interpreted, by various individuals. Often, contemporary interpretations and uses of archaeological sites have little to do with the actual histories of those sites. In that sense, places like Chichen Itza become canvases upon which various people project their ideas of the past. As the video illustrates, there is no absolute control over what Chichen Itza means, despite the efforts of INAH employees, archaeologists, and others. Some people flock to Chichen in hopes of attaining a sort of spiritual fulfillment, while others seek more immediate economic goals.
November 22, 2009
Interview: Colleen Morgan
The following is from an email-based interview with Colleen Morgan, who runs the blog Middle Savagery. These days I have a lot of questions about the direction(s) of anthropology, especially when it comes to the publication and dissemination of the information that anthropologists produce. Since Colleen Morgan's dissertation research is heavily focused on the use of New Media in archaeology, I thought that she would be a great person to start the discussion with:
Ryan Anderson: What do you think about the current model for academic publishing?
Colleen Morgan: I think that we are currently seeing academic publishing in flux—in academic disciplines such as physics, you see a wide engagement with open access publication, but in anthropology and archaeology we are still struggling with the complexities involved with our unique disciplines. In archaeology we have several different forms of data that we collect and there is not a robust, viable methodology for integrating these data in traditional publication or online. I think that there is still a lot of resistance to open access publication, and while there are some very valid reasons for this resistance such as revealing sacred indigenous knowledge or depicting sacred objects or human remains, the current "closed," paper-based publication model is not viable in the long term. That said, it is a dangerous prospect for graduate students who are trying to publish and establish their research--hiring and tenure are still based solely on peer-reviewed articles in traditional journals.
RA: In your opinion, how well do anthropologists and archaeologists engage with wider audiences?
CM: I think I have a skewed perspective on outreach within the anthropological and archaeological community. In my program at UC Berkeley, we are encouraged to do large amounts of outreach and we are given academic credit for this work. I am sure that this is not the case at other academic institutions and I do not know how much people do on their own. I think that archaeologists in particular do pretty well with outreach in a person-to-person scenario where people come to the site and we explain what we are doing as we work. In other respects we could do more with online outreach, and even more involvement in community-based research.
RA: Should anthropologists/archaeologists try to reach a more public audience?
CM: It is symptomatic of the current mode of the information age that archaeologists are attempting to make our data more available to the public. How much of this information will be lost in the ever increasing digital noise is the question. Fundamentally I show my roots in contract archaeology when I say that of course we should try to reach a wider audience--our funding structure and preservation of sites depends on it.
Ultimately the tension is between our interpretations of the past that show doubt, complexity, and conflict and a public that wants clarity, narrative, and resolution. Can we and should we cater to these impulses when they conflict with our "messy" interpretations? Obviously not, but it takes a good deal of skill to maintain a balance--I am not the Carl Sagan of anthropology, by any means.
RA: What are the benefits of attempting to reach wider audiences? And what about the drawbacks?
CM: Well, as I stated above, the benefits include getting more funding and perhaps saving sites from being completely looted. I will be utterly selfish though, in saying that one of the main benefits to reaching a wider audience is that moment of understanding and interest on a person's face as I describe an artifact or a site to them and they find a personal connection to a place and a way of life that was once far removed from their personal sphere. There are also benefits to learning how adaptable we are as a species and how our social relationships have been very different in the past--different in ways that make our current controversies over sex and religion seem rather minor.
The drawbacks have become even more pronounced for me in my more recent work in the Middle East with the highly politicized views of the past, especially in regard to the Bible and Islam. I am just beginning to negotiate these territories, but I still feel that it is important for us to share our finds, and be the major source of information about these finds. It is important in these cases to be comfortable in one's role as the interpreter of this information and to be available to rebut outrageous or inflammatory reuse of our data.
RA: How do you think information will be published and disseminated in the near future? What changes do you imagine (or hope) will take place, if any? If you could change anything about the current model, what would it be?
CM: In stark contrast with my interest in digital archaeology, I would dearly love some of the old modes of visual communication back, such as medium format photography and Victorian-grade site artists for illustrations. As I grow more comfortable with photography and 3D reconstructions, I get a greater appreciation for the interpretive potential of these older technologies. I hope that in the future there is room (and funding!) for all of these representations. The dream is obviously to have the uber-database with all archaeological materials and sites cataloged in a geo-located, cross-referenced, folksonomic structure, but finding the time, money, and legion of monkeys at typewriters to do all of the data entry is problematic, to
put it mildly.
In the short term, I don't see much of a change in publishing and dissemination, sadly. I think that we will see a greater availability of traditionally published articles and books, but big innovations will be slow to come because they are not rewarded financially or academically. There is also not an established peer review system for digital materials and there are only a handful of archaeologists trained in digital methodologies to critically evaluate these works. A lot of my work is at a very foundational level, coming up with citational strategies and showing the relevance of a particular technological application to theoretical and interpretive archaeological work.
One relatively small change that I would like to see in the digital publication world is a move toward Creative Commons licensing for all archaeological photography. There really is no reason to keep the rights for images locked up and not many people respect these copyrights anyway.
Cross-posted at The Prism.
Ryan Anderson: What do you think about the current model for academic publishing?
Colleen Morgan: I think that we are currently seeing academic publishing in flux—in academic disciplines such as physics, you see a wide engagement with open access publication, but in anthropology and archaeology we are still struggling with the complexities involved with our unique disciplines. In archaeology we have several different forms of data that we collect and there is not a robust, viable methodology for integrating these data in traditional publication or online. I think that there is still a lot of resistance to open access publication, and while there are some very valid reasons for this resistance such as revealing sacred indigenous knowledge or depicting sacred objects or human remains, the current "closed," paper-based publication model is not viable in the long term. That said, it is a dangerous prospect for graduate students who are trying to publish and establish their research--hiring and tenure are still based solely on peer-reviewed articles in traditional journals.
RA: In your opinion, how well do anthropologists and archaeologists engage with wider audiences?
CM: I think I have a skewed perspective on outreach within the anthropological and archaeological community. In my program at UC Berkeley, we are encouraged to do large amounts of outreach and we are given academic credit for this work. I am sure that this is not the case at other academic institutions and I do not know how much people do on their own. I think that archaeologists in particular do pretty well with outreach in a person-to-person scenario where people come to the site and we explain what we are doing as we work. In other respects we could do more with online outreach, and even more involvement in community-based research.
RA: Should anthropologists/archaeologists try to reach a more public audience?
CM: It is symptomatic of the current mode of the information age that archaeologists are attempting to make our data more available to the public. How much of this information will be lost in the ever increasing digital noise is the question. Fundamentally I show my roots in contract archaeology when I say that of course we should try to reach a wider audience--our funding structure and preservation of sites depends on it.
Ultimately the tension is between our interpretations of the past that show doubt, complexity, and conflict and a public that wants clarity, narrative, and resolution. Can we and should we cater to these impulses when they conflict with our "messy" interpretations? Obviously not, but it takes a good deal of skill to maintain a balance--I am not the Carl Sagan of anthropology, by any means.
RA: What are the benefits of attempting to reach wider audiences? And what about the drawbacks?
CM: Well, as I stated above, the benefits include getting more funding and perhaps saving sites from being completely looted. I will be utterly selfish though, in saying that one of the main benefits to reaching a wider audience is that moment of understanding and interest on a person's face as I describe an artifact or a site to them and they find a personal connection to a place and a way of life that was once far removed from their personal sphere. There are also benefits to learning how adaptable we are as a species and how our social relationships have been very different in the past--different in ways that make our current controversies over sex and religion seem rather minor.
The drawbacks have become even more pronounced for me in my more recent work in the Middle East with the highly politicized views of the past, especially in regard to the Bible and Islam. I am just beginning to negotiate these territories, but I still feel that it is important for us to share our finds, and be the major source of information about these finds. It is important in these cases to be comfortable in one's role as the interpreter of this information and to be available to rebut outrageous or inflammatory reuse of our data.
RA: How do you think information will be published and disseminated in the near future? What changes do you imagine (or hope) will take place, if any? If you could change anything about the current model, what would it be?
CM: In stark contrast with my interest in digital archaeology, I would dearly love some of the old modes of visual communication back, such as medium format photography and Victorian-grade site artists for illustrations. As I grow more comfortable with photography and 3D reconstructions, I get a greater appreciation for the interpretive potential of these older technologies. I hope that in the future there is room (and funding!) for all of these representations. The dream is obviously to have the uber-database with all archaeological materials and sites cataloged in a geo-located, cross-referenced, folksonomic structure, but finding the time, money, and legion of monkeys at typewriters to do all of the data entry is problematic, to
put it mildly.
In the short term, I don't see much of a change in publishing and dissemination, sadly. I think that we will see a greater availability of traditionally published articles and books, but big innovations will be slow to come because they are not rewarded financially or academically. There is also not an established peer review system for digital materials and there are only a handful of archaeologists trained in digital methodologies to critically evaluate these works. A lot of my work is at a very foundational level, coming up with citational strategies and showing the relevance of a particular technological application to theoretical and interpretive archaeological work.
One relatively small change that I would like to see in the digital publication world is a move toward Creative Commons licensing for all archaeological photography. There really is no reason to keep the rights for images locked up and not many people respect these copyrights anyway.
Cross-posted at The Prism.
November 17, 2009
Archaeology & Interpretation
“There is always a tension between past and present in archaeological interpretation; between the past meanings and processes which we wish to reconstruct from the material remains, and the meanings which we wish those remains to reveal to us in the present. This tension is nowhere greater than in accounts of past cultural groups.”
-Sian Jones, in "Discourses of Identity in the Interpretation of the Past" (63).
How are archaeological interpretations political? Is there any way for them to be anything but political? How can the past be misinterpreted, if not outright co-opted, in the present? Is archaeology really about the past? Or are archaeological interpretations more reflective of present conditions and realities?
If archaeologists find and collect a set of material remains, how much do their interpretations have to do with the distant people whose fragmentary traces those are?
Are archaeological interpretations merely a series of extended extrapolations, assumptions, and abstractions?
What can we tell about past human societies from their material traces? What kinds of things are impossible to discover?
What are the limitations? What kinds of things can material remains tell us about real people? What do objects tell us about individuals and groups? Are groups of objects in any way related to groups of people? How do we tell the difference between collections of artifacts and cultures?
If I were to analyze your kitchen silverware, what could I know about you? What could I learn about your identity from a detailed study of every object in your house? Where could I go wrong in my interpretations?
Why do I ask so many questions?
November 15, 2009
Seriously? Prospective tourism development at Chichen Itza
Another example of "sustainable" tourism, right?
November 9, 2009
power/anthropology
"Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society."
-Michel Foucault
Examples: A large ship sitting on a body of water that has the ability to launch missiles at a group of people at a moment's notice: that's power. A person who holds an armed weapon amidst unarmed bystanders: power. A judge who holds the ability to decide the fate of a fellow human based upon a certain set of philosophical and legal guidelines: power. A person from an incredibly wealthy nation who has the ability and/or desire to cross international borders for purposes of travel and leisure: power. A politician who can decide whether or not knowledge and resources should or should not be used to save lives: power. A person who lives in a politically and economically dominant society who has the ability to choose whether or not she/he should be concerned with the war of the week: power.
And anthropology? Where does anthropology fit in all of this? The ability to produce a collection of information about people that will then be disseminated as a source of "truth" about said people: power. The ability to promote and re-create a longstanding project of knowledge production that casts itself as one of the main protagonists: power, again.
The ability to imagine some kind of alternative course of action to some of the above "situations"? Well, that's power too. Right?
-Michel Foucault
Examples: A large ship sitting on a body of water that has the ability to launch missiles at a group of people at a moment's notice: that's power. A person who holds an armed weapon amidst unarmed bystanders: power. A judge who holds the ability to decide the fate of a fellow human based upon a certain set of philosophical and legal guidelines: power. A person from an incredibly wealthy nation who has the ability and/or desire to cross international borders for purposes of travel and leisure: power. A politician who can decide whether or not knowledge and resources should or should not be used to save lives: power. A person who lives in a politically and economically dominant society who has the ability to choose whether or not she/he should be concerned with the war of the week: power.
And anthropology? Where does anthropology fit in all of this? The ability to produce a collection of information about people that will then be disseminated as a source of "truth" about said people: power. The ability to promote and re-create a longstanding project of knowledge production that casts itself as one of the main protagonists: power, again.
The ability to imagine some kind of alternative course of action to some of the above "situations"? Well, that's power too. Right?
November 7, 2009
"Voice of a Mountain" film
Sometimes the most powerful aspects of history are those that are left out entirely. How many people in the US have heard very much about the histories of the civil war in Guatemala? How can these kinds of stories simply slip past so many of us? Why does this happen?
Here is a short film about one community in Guatemala, and some of their experiences. during the civil war. Just one more fragment out of a multitude of experiences and perspectives:
The rest of the film can be seen on the website for Voice of a Mountain, here.
Here is a short film about one community in Guatemala, and some of their experiences. during the civil war. Just one more fragment out of a multitude of experiences and perspectives:
The rest of the film can be seen on the website for Voice of a Mountain, here.
November 2, 2009
anthropology/war/power
This is a trailer of the film about the Human Terrain System project. Here is the website for the film. And here is a recent post by Max Forte that discusses this film, among other things.
Here is what the American Anthropological Association says about HTS.
Here is what HTS says about HTS.
Here is what Wikipedia says about HTS.
Here is one example of what John Stanton says about HTS.
And here is a September 2009 piece on HTS from Foreign Policy.
So what do YOU think about HTS?
November 1, 2009
photography/poverty/development
This image is from Cordaid, which is an international development organization. According to the organization's web site:
"Cordaid combines more than 90 years’ experience and expertise in emergency aid and structural poverty eradication. We are one of the biggest international development organisations with a network of almost a thousand partner organisations in 36 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America."
Any thoughts?
Hat tip: Lisa at Sociological Images (a few more images from this series can be found on this post).
"Cordaid combines more than 90 years’ experience and expertise in emergency aid and structural poverty eradication. We are one of the biggest international development organisations with a network of almost a thousand partner organisations in 36 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America."
Any thoughts?
Hat tip: Lisa at Sociological Images (a few more images from this series can be found on this post).
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