A new site

Well, I think this site has just about run its course.  But you can still find me on Savage Minds, and of course at the anthropologies project.

Updates: fieldwork, internet connections, etc

I haven't posted here in about two months, for a whole slew of reasons. The main one was because I did not have any internet access for about two months.  And, considering the fact that I am in the middle of fieldwork, it was getting a little impossible to keep up with this site, anthropologies, and posting at Savage Minds while also doing the fieldwork thing.  So...I kind of dropped off the fact of the blogosphere for a bit.  Now that I have a decent internet connection again, I am going to try to keep the fires kindled to a reasonable extent.  But the fieldowork part of life is still taking up most of my time, so I won't be back at regular blogging level for a while yet.  Anyway, there's the update.

John Hawks & Open Access News

From john hawks weblog:

"Today's NIH repository and the data access provisions of NSF grants were established by acts of Congress in the late 1990s. In my opinion, the agencies have in many areas gotten away with the bare minimum of compliance with these regulations. Worse, far from strengthening open access to publications and data, some in Congress want to reverse them. The current effort owes much to lobbying by academic publishers, and large campaign donations from officers and employees of those publishers to key Congressmen."

Read the rest here.

40,000 Murders Since 2006 (Mexico)

From a recent article on Time.com by Ioan Grillo:

In his comprehensive and compelling new book, El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency, British correspondent Ioan Grillo, who also reports for TIME, narrates the Mexican underworld's "radical transformation from drug smugglers into paramilitary death squads ... a criminal insurgency that poses the biggest armed threat to Mexico since its 1910 revolution." Grillo outlines both the Mexican and American policy failures that fostered the crisis, which has produced 40,000 murders south of the border since 2006. More important, he offers a rare and unsettling look into the lives of ordinary Mexicans and other Latin Americans "sucked into [the drug war] or victimized by it."

Read the rest here.

News and updates: Savage Minds, etc

The news this summer is that I have been given the chance to blog at Savage Minds full-time, which is great.  I have always been a fan of their site, and I am definitely excited to take part.  So most of my blogging will shift over there, but I will still cross-post here as well.  My posts at SM will focus specifically on anthropology, and I will still use this site for some other themes (photography especially) that I tend to write about.  So far this summer my blogging has been somewhat limited, but I plan on getting more going pretty soon.  I have been out in California getting some time to regroup after a particularly long semester.  I am also trying to read some key books before I take my quals this fall.  Beyond all that, my wife and I have been able to get in some time alongside the Pacific Ocean, which was much needed for the creativity barometer, if you know what I mean.

One of the main themes for this summer reading: development and economics.  I just finished reading Neil Smith's Uneven Development, and finally reread Harvey's Spaces of Global Capitalism.  I am in the middle of reading Hart and Hann's (2010) Economic Anthropology, which is great so far.  Another good read that I came across yesterday: Amartya Sen's recent article on the relevance of Adam Smith.  You can access the PDF here.  My side project, in addition to my readings for the quals, is finding ways to investigate modern economic theory and practice, especially concepts like the so-called "free market," which people use all the time without a lot of, well, empirical basis.  Anyway, that's what's happening in my free time.

Conference at the University of Kentucky: Dimensions of Political Ecology

Well, it's getting pretty close to the conference that the Political Ecology Working Group is putting together at the University of Kentucky. In fact, I need to finish my paper SOON. The conference focuses on interdisciplinary research that explores the nexus between nature and society. To find out a bit more, check out the PEWG website at the U of Kentucky. Also, here is a copy of a preliminary flier, just to add some visual zest to this post:

*Photograph: Power lines running across the deserts in Imperial County, California, 2006. Taken by yours truly while I was burning up in the middle of the summer.