The Neoliberalized, Debt-plagued,Low Wage, Corporatized UniversityJanuary 2013 ~ Contents ~Introduction: Speaking of the neoliberal universityRyan AndersonFear and loathing in academia Francine BaroneBusting apart the silos of knowledge production Erin B. TaylorSome historical notes on the decline of the university Keith HartPassing with Pills: Redefining Performance in the Pharmaceuticalized University Tazin Karim Neoliberal Education: From Affordable Education to Expensive TrainingPatrick Bigger & Victor E. KappelerSurviving in the meantimeGreg DowneyReview of Andrew Delbanco's "College" Ryan Anderson
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ethnografix: anthropologies: The neoliberal university
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The Global Sociology Blog: Do We Need Sociology Binders Full of Women?
Based on Urban Demographics’s post, it would appear so:
The diversity, it is grossly lacking. Also, how many of them are still alive?
It may be related to this (also from Urban Demographics):
At the same time, it is expected that peer-reviewed publications to refer to the existing body of knowledge in each sub-field of the discipline and some “classical” concepts are bound to come up over and over (e.g.: ”strength of weak ties” hence the presence of Granovetter in the list above). It is a bit distressing to see that even the few big women names don’t appear in the list (Sassen, Hochschild, etc.).
Unfortunately, I am not sure that us socbloggers have done such a bang up job in citing “out of the box”. We do touch upon a variety of topics, but do we actually cite or refer to more recent research by underrepresented categories? I don’t know but from my totally-unscientific readings, not all that much.
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Anthropology Report: Anthropology, Gun Reform, American Anthropological Association
The U.S. hangs in legislative limbo about gun reform: national reforms proposed but with uncertain legislative chances. Some states enact gun reform laws, others increase militarization. Many people in the U.S. push for gun reform legislation, others stock up at the gun store.
This is a follow-up to the December 2012 Gun Violence Anthropology: AAA and the NRA when I lamented the lack of a statement on gun violence from the American Anthropological Association and the missed opportunity for ethnographic speculation on “preppers.” A big thank you to the American Anthropological Association for issuing the Statement on Gun Violence and to anthropologist Chad Huddleston for revisiting his ethnography, ‘Doomsday Preppers’: Our New Threat?. See below for those links and more updates on gun reform anthropology.
Statement on Gun Violence, American Anthropological Association
We call upon the Congress and the Administration to rescind measures that obstruct the development of empirical knowledge about guns and public safety. Further, we call on the Congress and the Administration to make additional federal funds available, as an urgent national priority, for rigorous peer-reviewed research by experts from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to investigate ways of reducing the tragic loss of life in incidents involving guns.
American Anthropological Association Blog, 14 January 2013
‘Doomsday Preppers’: Our New Threat?, Chad Huddleston
Survivalism has been dragged back into the news lately with details about the ‘prepping’ done by Nancy Lanza, Adam Lanza’s mother. For many, this may have been the first time they have heard the term ‘prepping’ or ‘prepper’. Some may be familiar with the term due to the show Doomsday Preppers on NatGeo, of which Nancy Lanza was rumored to be a fan. As I read through the various stories coming out on this specific detail of the very large and complex story of the shooting in Connecticut, I was interested in tracking the creation of a discourse on this new category of possible threat–the prepper. Who are these people and should we be worried?
American Anthropological Association Blog, 16 January 2013
More guns in schools? An ethnographer’s perspective, Kathleen Nolan
We do not need cadres of armed guards or gun-toting principals in schools. We need instead amply staffed teams of social workers and counselors in schools—professionals who work from an educational, child-development, or mental health perspective, rather than a criminal justice paradigm. We need to invest much more in providing schools with these supports as part of reasonable and well researched, rather than reactionary and dangerous, school security plans. We also need better and more accessible mental health services in and out of schools, and we need to target gun violence at its source through strict gun control. Don’t let the reactionary, uninformed rhetoric of puffed-up politicians sway you.
University of Minnesota Press Blog, 10 January 2013
Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School, Kathleen Nolan
As zero-tolerance discipline policies have been instituted at high schools across the country, police officers are employed with increasing frequency to enforce behavior codes and maintain order, primarily at poorly performing, racially segregated urban schools. Actions that may once have sent students to the detention hall or resulted in their suspension may now introduce them to the criminal justice system. In Police in the Hallways, Kathleen Nolan explores the impact of policing and punitive disciplinary policies on the students and their educational experience. Through in-depth interviews with and observations of students, teachers, administrators, and police officers, Nolan offers a rich and nuanced account of daily life at a Bronx high school where police patrol the hallways and security and discipline fall under the jurisdiction of the NYPD. She documents how, as law enforcement officials initiate confrontations with students, small infractions often escalate into “police matters” that can lead to summonses to criminal court, arrest, and confinement in juvenile detention centers.
University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
Guns, Guts and Glory, Debra Lattanzi
I’m already fatigued by folks who complain that it won’t make a difference. While I see that point, this is a huge problem and will take many years to address, why is the default response to throw up our hands as if there is nothing that can be done. Probably the most effective outcome of all of this effort is the end on the freeze on gun violence research. And discussion. The first step to addressing gun violence is talking abou it, something the NRA has tried to stop for decades. There is good reason for this: talking about gun violence makes us aware of it, and the need to stop it. That’s been the first step in making a difference drunk driving, smoking, and child sexual abuse. Wayne LaPierre should be very afraid that we’re talking, tweeting and blogging about guns. The more you know, the more likely you are to act.
Living Ethnography, 17 January 2013
Taking Aim, Charles M. Blow
One of the most profound lessons to emerge from the Newtown tragedy is the power of voice. Americans refused to cede the discussion to the N.R.A. and other gun interests. They refused to buckle to fear or be swayed by propaganda. Yet too many politicians still quake at the mere mention of the N.R.A. They are more interested in protecting their jobs than protecting society. The public must make them quake at the idea of doing nothing on this issue.
We must never forget what happened in Connecticut last month and we must never forget what happens in Washington in the coming months. The tragedy of Newtown must herald the dawn of a new America.
Charles M. Blow, Columnist, The New York Times, 16 January 2013
Anthropology and Gun Violence: New Guns or New Gun Control?, Jason Antrosio
Will the gun violence of 2012 lead to new gun control resolve or to new guns? Anthropology can join a push for sanity on gun violence and control.
Living Anthropologically, 31 December 2012
Semi-Automatic Weapons Buyback – The Future of Gun Reform, Jason Antrosio
Gun reform is important, but the U.S. needs to reduce the weaponry, buying back 50 million semi-automatic weapons. Australia did it. We can do it too.
the Local is Possible, 18 December 2012
Comment on Nicholas Kristof’s “Lessons From Guns and a Goose”, Jason Antrosio
A comment on the need for empirical and anthropological research into gun violence, since Kristof’s studies came from the 1990s, a consequence of an NRA-supported gag on research.
New York Times, 16 January 2013
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Somatosphere: Book review: Tanya Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back by Rebecca J. Lester
When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God
by T. M. Luhrmann
Random House, 2012
464 pp, US$28.95 hardcover, US$15.95 paperback
How does God become and remain real for modern evangelicals? How are rational, sensible people of faith able to experience the presence of a powerful yet invisible being, and sustain the belief in an environment of overwhelming skepticism? These questions frame When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, the newest offering by Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann. This substantial text (464 pages) is a remarkable book, earning it a spot on the New York Times list of top 100 books for 2012. It is also an unusual book, navigating the rocky shores of political controversy, anthropological theories of belief, and neuropsychological models of mind, while speaking to both lay and academic audiences alike. Given this, is perhaps not surprising that despite its significant strengths, the book does not succeed equally well at all of its goals. It is, however, the “why” of these shortcomings that will likely be of particular interest to anthropologists.
Luhrmann focuses on adult converts to Evangelical Christianity, individuals who were not raised in the Evangelical tradition, but have come to it through a variety of means and from diverse backgrounds. As converts, they must all learn how to become Evangelicals; that is, how to cultivate a relationship to an intimately personal and yet transcendent God, who is both eminently present and yet never fully perceptible by conventional means, and who speaks directly to his [sic] followers in their everyday lives. To many Americans, Luhrmann notes, the Evangelical view of God seems bizarre, and even delusional. Holding this interpretation in agnostic suspension, Luhrmann seeks instead to understand how such experiences become not only possible for new converts, but move to the very center of their lives.
The book’s ten chapters are organized to take us through the process by which new converts come to believe what at first glance appears, even to them, patently unbelievable. In chapter one, “The Invitation,” Luhrmann discusses the history of contemporary American Evangelicalism, making a surprising and fascinating link to the counterculture movements of the 1960s, where immediate, personal connection with the divine was sought by many different means. Viewed in this light, the evangelical quest for intense spiritual connection no longer seems radically out of place in a largely secular society, but emerges as one path among many through which people seek and find meaning in their lives.
In chapter two, “Is That You, God?” Luhrmann discusses the fundamental issue of how people come to believe that they are communicating with God and that God is responding in direct, concrete, ways. Converts learn to listen for God’s voice within them, and are scaffolded in how to discern whether they are perceiving God correctly.
Chapter three, “Let’s Pretend,” discusses specific imaginative practices designed to strengthen one’s experience of God as real; for example, planning a weekly “date night” with Jesus, complete with dinner out and intimate conversation on a park bench, or pouring a cup of coffee for God at the breakfast table each morning. Here, Luhrmann emphasizes, imagination becomes a critical tool for persuading oneself of a reality that is not yet a felt reality.
Chapter four, “Developing Your Heart” takes us deeper. Experiencing God as real is not simply a question of belief, but of emotion. Once God truly becomes real for you, evangelicals contend, you will feel awash in his unconditional love. Luhrmann notes that this is not usually a sudden, radical shift in experience, but one that must be developed over time, through practices that she observes share much in common with psychotherapy. These practices, such as “crying in the presence of God,” and “seeing from God’s perspective” cultivate within the practitioner a deeply intimate and personal connection with God, despite (or perhaps because of) God’s intangibility.
Chapters five, (“Learning from the Experts,”) six (“Lord, Teach Us to Pray”) and seven (“The Skill of Prayer”) unfurl Luhrmann’s argument about how prayer practices change how converts attend to themselves and the world. Converts come to a new understanding of their own inner processes, coming to believe that God, who is external to them, nevertheless speaks to them from within their own minds.
In chapter eight, “But are They Crazy?” Luhrmann engages with the implications of this evangelical model of mind/self/body within American understandings of mental health. Generally, the conviction that someone outside of oneself can enter into one’s most private thoughts is considered evidence of serious psychiatric compromise. Luhrmann is emphatic that this is not the case for the vast majority of evangelicals who claim that God speaks to them directly (there are, of course, always exceptions). Rather, Luhrmann argues, they have developed a model and experience of mind wherein the experience of part of the mind as “not me” is unproblematic and even sought after.
Chapter nine, “Darkness,” considers the flip side of coming to believe that God is real and intimately attentive to one’s innermost processes. If one allows that God is real, demons, too, can be real, and can have direct effects on people’s lives. In this chapter Luhrmann raises the caveat that changes in perceptive capacities can have unintended consequences.
Chapter ten, “Bridging the Gap,” concludes the book by examining ambiguity and doubt as imminently human conditions, common to evangelicals and non-evangelicals alike. We all, Luhrmann argues, contend with the problem of belief in a world riddled with doubt and cynicism. In this, we can find not only common ground, but mutual recognition and respect.
Luhrmann’s basic argument in the book is that Evangelical practices help converts develop a new theory of mind in which they come to experience aspects of their own inner worlds– thoughts, feelings, sensations– as coming from outside of themselves, from God. This new experience of mind is necessary, Luhrmann argues, because, unlike other forms of Christianity, Evangelicalism emerged in a cultural context that legitimates doubt and must continually struggle to ground its claims within a broader secular world. This generates for converts what Luhrmann calls a “double epistemological register,” a paradoxical rendering of God as both fundamentally real and, at the same time, not quite believable. This paradox emerges, she says, because faith asks people to consider that the evidence from their senses is wrong (xii). Faith requires people to accept that things can be real even though our usual perceptive mechanisms cannot easily detect them. Doing so requires a new theory of mind that can accommodate this paradox. Evangelicals cultivate this theory of mind, Luhrmann argues, through practices that spotlight these paradoxical claims and turn them into a form of “play” (such as the “date night” with Jesus) which adherents themselves view as somewhat silly, but which nevertheless scaffold a capacity for holding two truths simultaneously that would seem to be patently incongruent. Over time, Luhrmann argues, such practices train Evangelicals’ minds to experience God as a living presence in their lives.
This is in many ways a brilliant argument, as anyone familiar with Luhrmann’s work would expect. It highlights the rich possibilities of anthropological engagements with locally construed metacognitive processes and the social practices through which theories of mind emerge and shift as people grapple with novel historical and cultural circumstances.
At the same time, I found aspects of the argument troubling. Luhrmann’s approach is an implicitly rationalist one that not only privileges an empiricism rooted in the material world as the barometer of the real, but figures belief as a primarily cognitive process. For the sake of space, I will focus here on the contradictions Luhrmann identifies as central to Evangelical belief and around which she builds her argument; namely, that (1) God is both real and not really real; and (2) God is the all-powerful master of the universe and also cares about what I eat for lunch. Luhrmann argues that sustaining these contradictions necessitates a new theory of mind for converts and that this is what is developed through Evangelical faith practices.
As a non-Christian non-believer who has spent a great many years around true believers (Evangelical and otherwise), I found myself asking: Why, exactly, are these assertions contradictory? Why can’t God be both real and not quite real? Why can’t God rule the universe and help me find my keys? In fact, these contradictions only seem to exist if (1) we consider faith to be a primarily cognitive issue; (2) we reduce “the real” to things perceptible to our five culturally recognized senses; and (3) we presume a default theory of mind that is solitary and unitary.
All “real” is not created equal. There is the “real” of manifest materiality. But as philosophers, social scientists, physicists, and others have argued, this leads to an exceedingly narrow definition of reality that excludes many dimensions of human experience. Moving up a level of abstraction, we might say that the “real” also includes things—like gravity, or love–that we cannot directly perceive but whose effects we can experience. I cannot see or touch gravity, but I believe it exists because of how it affects the things I can see and touch. This sort of inference requires cognitive processes similar to what Luhrmann calls “imagination;” treating mental representations of non-material things as if they were “real.” Gravity, then, is both real and not real, without paradox.
And much as gravity works on the scale of galaxies and atoms simultaneously, Evangelicalism views God’s presence as unproblematically multidimensional. God runs the universe and He cares if I lie. From this perspective, activities like date night with Jesus still seem playful, but the play is, after all, deeply serious, as Luhrmann herself has argued elsewhere (1989). If we cannot fully perceive God with our paltry human senses and must develop alternative strategies to help expand our perceptions, this does not necessarily suggest that we doubt God is real, or that we can’t quite believe He exists.
So, if the contradictions at the center of Luhrmann’s argument are less contradictory than they might appear, would this shift our interpretations of Evangelical faith practices in relationship to doubt? I suggest that what Luhrmann describes is less about doubt in God and more about doubt in one’s capacity to fully attune to God, which is an entirely different matter.
From a faith perspective, the foundation of one’s relationship with God is one’s own disposition or intention; I must become truly available to God for the relationship to form and flourish. If I make-believe I am on a date-night with Jesus, well, then I actually am, because He is always available, waiting for me to open up to Him. The second I do, the pretending becomes the reality. It is both. Techniques like pouring an extra cup of coffee for God in the morning “work,” then, not because I really expect God to shuffle in and have a seat (though He could if He wanted to), but because the act itself produces a disposition within me that enables me to perceive and relate to a God who is actually always there but is usually outside my conscious awareness.
If such practices are less about mitigating doubt and more about cultivating attunement, the question becomes whether this requires adherents to develop a new theory of mind, Luhrmann’s “double epistemological register.” I am not persuaded that it does, and not only because I do not think the contradictions are actually contradictions. Rather, I contend we all maintain and move among multiple epistemological registers all the time–regardless of religious belief, faith practice, or lack thereof–because different kinds of real depend on different kinds of evidence. I do not think this is unique to religious belief, and it only generates paradox if we insist on the strict one-epistemology-at-a-time policy of scientific rationalism. In taking this to be the norm, Luhrmann ends up privileging materialist understandings of what makes something real, what counts as evidence and, therefore, what generates doubt, leaving us yearning for the subtler theorizing for which she is so deservedly renowned.
A more serious concern with the book is the lack of critical engagement with the political and social impacts of American Evangelicalism, a deliberate and central focus of many Evangelical faith practices. Luhrmann notes at the outset that one of her goals in writing the book is to build bridges between Evangelical Christians and the surrounding society, which is largely hostile to them. Because of this, she says, she decided to deliberately bracket issues of politics and focus instead on shared human dilemmas about ambiguity, doubt, and belief.
Bridge building is indeed an admirable aim. Yet in eschewing critical engagement with the political dimensions of American Evangelicalism, Luhrmann glosses over the very reasons so many Americans find Evangelicalism concerning. People are generally not hostile towards Evangelicals because Evangelicals believe God talks to them, per se, but because of what many of them believe God tells them to do – like stand outside Planned Parenthood displaying huge color posters of mutilated fetuses on the road I travel with my young children in the car each morning, picket at military funerals claiming that soldiers die because God hates gay people, or murder abortion doctors.
Certainly, to paint a whole group of people with the same brush because a small minority has acted in violent or unsavory ways is just as unfair to do in the case of Evangelicals as it is for Muslims, Jews, or African-Americans. The difference is that over the past two decades American Evangelicalism has become increasingly influential in the political arena, with social policy positions often explicitly articulated within a religio-nationalist narrative that equates evangelical perspectives with core American values. The political arm of the Evangelical movement is well-funded, well-networked, and fiercely committed to the realization of a social reality consistent with Evangelical religious views. What concerns many non-Evangelicals then, is not Evangelicals’ relationship with God, but how this relationship is often publicly cited as a justification for the imposition of a particular set of religious values on others by whatever means necessary. This sense of entitlement is not simply rooted in Evangelical’s understandings of God; it is inseparable from the racial, gendered, and political positionality of the movement’s founders, leadership, and majority of its followers. By not discussing these issues, Luhrmann inadvertently facilitates the invisibility of privilege enjoyed by this powerfully influential segment of the population.
Despite these issues, When God Talks Back is beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, as only an ethnographer and writer of Luhrmann’s caliber can produce. Productively pushing the boundaries of anthropological inquiry, Luhrmann has once again distinguished herself as one of anthropology’s most creative and important thinkers in recent decades.
Work Cited
Luhrmann, T.M. 1989. Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Rebecca J. Lester is Associate Professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis and author of Jesus in Our Wombs: Embodying Modernity in a Mexican Convent (University of California Press, 2005). Other recent publications include “Lessons from the Borderline: Anthropology, Psychiatry and the Risks of Being Human” (Feminism & Psychology, 2013), “Brokering Authenticity: Borderline Personality Disorder and the Ethics of Care in an American Eating Disorders Clinic (Current Anthropology, 2009), and “Anxious Bliss: A Case of Dissociation in a Mexican Nun (Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 2008). Lester is also a practicing psychotherapist, specializing in eating disorders, trauma, and self-harm.
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The Global Sociology Blog: The Anti-Gay Marriage Crowd Makes a Category Mistake (Again)
1. Apologies to real philosophers for my butchering of Gilbert Ryle‘s concept.
2. Yay! Pierre Maura is blogging again! (He had better not raise our hopes only to crush them with a one-time thing).
Anyhoo, it is this brand new blog post over as Comprendre that led drew me back to Gilbert Ryle’s concept of category mistake. But first off, a bit of context. The current French government has drafted a bill to legalize gay marriage. That bill was being considered in committee. It is now out and has to go before the National Assembly. Needless to say, the anti-gay crowd, led by that bastion of morality, the Catholic Church, is up in arms about it. They had a big demonstration last weekend. They want a referendum on the issue. And to support their view, they have put out the poster below:
Even if you do not understand French, it is not hard to see what is going on here. The top squares and the bottom left square refer to the Arab Spring and their overthrow of the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Each square is accompanied by some text, supposedly a quote attributed to French president François Hollande (no citations though) that is the same in all three squares “(name of dictator) must listen to his people”.
Then, the bottom right square has a crowd shot of the anti-gay marriage demonstration that reproduces the same quote “Mr Hollande must listen to his people”. they must be very proud of themselves for this, thinking they have a major zinger, right?
Not so fast. This is where the concept of category mistake comes in handy. The properties of the first three squares are not the same as that of the last one.
1. The events in the cases of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, were triggered by economic woes combined with a major discontent with regimes that ranked from authoritarian to totalitarian. They demand for representation and vote was based precisely on the absence of such things in these countries, in any meaningful ways.
In France, people have had the opportunity to vote four times since last Spring: twice for the Presidential election, and twice for the general elections. Before these elections, there had been local elections. President Hollande is not the illegitimate dictator of an authoritarian or totalitarian regime. There is therefore no basis for the demand that President Hollande listen to his people since gay marriage was in his platform and he got elected. He is therefore actually listening to his people by implementing something he was elected to do.
On this point alone, the comparison fall through.
2. The demonstrations in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya involved a great deal of risk for physical safety of the participants. What they were doing was a direct challenge to repressive regimes that might strike back at them with violence, something which actually did happen.
In France, demonstrations are legal and usually authorized with some discussion with local police departments. An agreement is reached on schedule, itinerary, and security. Such demonstrations are safe. There is no risk to the participants beyond the demands of a long-ish walk.
3. It is a bit funny that the only apt comparison is that in all four cases, these demonstrations have involved reactionary, religious fundamentalist movements making somewhat of a comeback on the political scene, movements that would happily deny gays their basic rights. After all, homosexuality is illegal in these countries but has been decriminalized in France in the early 80s.
4. In the first three cases, the collective demand is for an extension of political rights. In the French case, the collective demand is that of denial of right to an entire category of people and the preservation of exclusive privilege to heterosexuals.
So, because I’m nice, let me provide the proper comparison here:
For those of you who read French, go read the entirety of Maura’s post as it is consistent with my own here.
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tabsir.net: Tabsir Redux: Syrian Cuisine, Two Centuries Ago
[Note: The following account is by the English traveler William Wittman, who commented on the foods and crops he saw while passing through the Levant in what was then Syria. The spelling is that of the original, from a time when proof reading was a distant concern and spelling was a democratic venture. The picture above is from the original 1803 edition.
Wherever the land is susceptible of cultivation, and has not been neglected, it affords abundant crops of wheat, barley, Indian corn (dourra), tobacco, cotton, and other productions. Fruits and vegetables are in equal abundance. Among the former are pomegranates, figs, oranges, lemons, citrons of an uncommonly large size, melons, grapes, and olives. The melons are large, and have a delicious flavour; as have also the grapes. of which we partook so late as the month of December, when we found they still retained their exquisite flavour. I have already adverted to the uncommon size of the water-melons, many of which weight from twenty to thirty pounds. they are a great and valuable resource to the inhabitants, who are so passionately fond of them, that, during the summer months, they form a great part of their subsistence. Notwithstanding they are as cooling and refreshing, as grateful to the taste, I was surprised to see the natives eat them in such immoderate quantities, without experiencing any unpleasant consequences. (more…)
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The Naked Anthropologist: HIV and Sex Work: The View from 2012
Sexual-health outreach, Machala, Ecuador, Photo Rosa Manzo
Research for Sex Work #13 is out, and as its editor this year I am happy with it. This journal was first published by Vrije Universiteit Medical Centre in Amsterdam in 1998 and since 2004 is published by the NSWP. Writings by sex workers and research that centre their words and concerns have priority for publication.
The NSWP has five official languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese. Each issue is published in English plus one other of these; this edition is bilingual English-Chinese. Articles come from all over the world.
The call for submissions went out last June. Some editions are general, but most have a special theme. This year’s theme is HIV and Sex Work – but hold on before you click away because that sounds uninteresting, disease-oriented, victimising or too technical – the view from 2012 is different! Read my introduction to the edition below to hear why; the table of contents follows.
HIV and Sex Work – The view from 2012 Issue 13, December 2012
Not so long ago a journal issue called HIV and Sex Work would almost certainly have focused on epidemiological studies of female prostitutes. More sensitive authors might have said sex workers and acknowledged that men and transgender people also sell sex. They might have stopped calling sex workers vectors of disease and begun calling them a high-risk group, and when that term was recognised to be stigmatising they might have switched to talking about at-risk populations. In discussing efforts to diminish the spread of HIV, researchers might have talked about harm reduction, and they might even have invoked the need to ‘involve’ sex workers in health promotion. But sex workers would rarely have been the protagonists in research, the writers of published critiques or the strategists of campaigns. HIV and AIDS as topics were the terrain of institutions. This issue of Research for Sex Work reflects a small shift. Here HIV and Sex Work doesn’t mean an array of epidemiologically-oriented studies but the frame for critiques of and questions about policy, laws and programmes. Articles not written by sex workers themselves base their conclusions on what sex workers say. Here no one tells sex workers how to run their lives.
CSWONF at IAC 2012, Photo Hou Ye
Research from CSWONF in China shows how policing is a central issue for HIV-prevention. In her speech at the International AIDS Conference Cheryl Overs highlights how technological fixes threaten to push aside sex workers’ rights. Brendan Conner exposes how the Global Commission on HIV and the Law erases problems of male sex workers by using epidemiological-style ‘populations’. Empower Foundation tell how they were ousted from the Global Fund’s HIV programme for sex workers in Thailand when they criticised priorities. Matthew Greenall and Abel Shinana propose research that foregrounds local sex workers’ needs. And Tiphaine Besnard shows how stigma against women who sell sex has been behind discriminatory policy since the 19th century.
Condoms from St James Infirmary, Photo PJ Starr
Audacia Ray and Sarah Elspeth Patterson describe how activists have brought such critiques into the world of political lobbying through a campaign against the use of condoms as evidence against prostitutes in New York State. The concept of outreach takes on new meaning in Ecuador, as sex workers from Asociación ’22 de junio’ and Colectivo Flor de Azalea educate men about sexual health. Not all the news is good. Nicoletta Policek’s study reveals how HIV-positive women not involved in selling sex refuse to accept sex workers as equals. But even in the more repressive settings described by Kehinde Okanlawon/Ade Iretunde and Winnie Koster/Marije Groot Bruinderink, sex workers resist stigma and subvert discrimination. Diputo Lety tells Elsa Oliveira the story of how one sex worker empowered herself after testing positive for HIV. And although the fragility of African sex-worker networks is noted, this Research for Sex Work has no fewer than four contributions from Africa. Numerous high-quality images enhance our understanding of HIV and Sex Work. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue.
Table of Contents
HIV and Sex Work: the View from 2012 (Laura María Agustín)
Anti-Pornography Crackdowns: Sex Work and HIV in China (China Sex Worker Organisation Network Forum)
Living With HIV: How I Treat Myself (Told by Diputo Lety to Elsa Oliveira)
Men At Work: Male Sex Workers, HIV and the Law (Brendan Michael Conner)
Blaming Disease on Female Sex Workers: A Long History (Tiphaine Besnard)
Working With the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Empower Foundation Thailand)
Sexual-Health Outreach in Machala, Ecuador (Asociación ‘22 de junio’ and Colectivo Flor de Azalea)
Promoting Sex Worker-Led Research in Namibia (Matthew Greenall and Abel Shinana)
The Tide Can Not Be Turned without Us (Cheryl Overs)
Gay Parties and Male Sex Workers in Nigeria (Kehinde Okanlawon and Ade Iretunde)
No Condoms as Evidence: A Sex-Worker Campaign in New York (Audacia Ray and Sarah Elspeth Patterson)
‘The Space Which Is Not Mine’: Sex Workers Living With HIV/AIDS in Venice and Edinburgh (Nicoletta Policek)
Female-Condom Use in Zimbabwe, Cameroon and Nigeria (Winny Koster and Marije Groot Bruinderink)
Direct link to the pdf of HIV and Sex Work – The view from 2012.
Angela Villón at the Kolkata Freedom Festival, Photo Luca Stevenson
–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist
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Ethno::log: Indigenous Cinema auf der Berlinale
Auf der diesjährigen Berlinale (7.-17. Februar 2013) wird erstmals die Sonderreihe "Native - A Journey into Indigenous Cinema" zu sehen sein. Eröffnungsfilm ist der Spielfilm "Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner" (2001) von Zacharias Kunuk.
Gezeigt werden 24 Spiel- und Dokumentarfilme. Der regionale Fokus liegt in diesem Jahr auf Filmen aus Ozeanien, Australien, Nordamerika und der Arktis.
Pressemitteilung und Filmauswahl:
www.berlinale.de
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Language Log: NACLO 2013
The first round of the 2013 North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad will take place on January 31, 2013, at 45 sites around the U.S. and Canada. As the NACLO web site explains, it
… is a contest in which high-school students solve linguistic puzzles. In solving the problems, students learn about the diversity and consistency of language, while exercising logic skills. No prior knowledge of linguistics or second languages is necessary. Professionals in linguistics, computational linguistics and language technologies use dozens of languages to create engaging problems that represent cutting edge issues in their fields. The competition has attracted top students to study and work in those same fields. It is truly an opportunity for young people to experience a taste of natural-language processing in the 21st century.
Dragomir Radev contributed a LLOG post about the first NACLO, back in 2007; and NACLO veterans have done well in recent International Linguistics Olympiads. Registration at most sites is open through January 30, 2013.
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Erkan in the Army now...: We are here! – Buradayız! – Ahparig! Some Turkish citizens continue to remember Dink Assassination…
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tabsir.net: The School of Mamlūk Studies
The School of Mamlūk Studies (SMS) is administered by the Universities of Chicago (Ill., USA), Liège (Belgium), and Venice (Italy), respectively represented by Marlis Saleh, Frédéric Bauden, and Antonella Ghersetti. It is currently based at the University of Chicago, where Mamluk-related projects such as Mamlūk Studies Review, the Chicago Online Bibliography of Mamluk Studies, and the Chicago Online Encyclopedia of Mamluk Studies are managed. The mission of SMS is to provide a scholarly forum for a holistic approach to Mamluk studies, and to foster and promote a greater awareness of the Mamluk sultanate (1250–1517). It aims to offer a forum for interdisciplinary debate focused on the Mamluk period in all its historical and cultural dimensions in order to increase, address, investigate, and exchange information and knowledge relevant to Mamluk studies in the broadest meaning of the term. Conceived as a meeting for scholars and graduate students working on any of the many aspects of the Mamluk empire, without neglecting its contacts with other regions, SMS offers to everyone working in the field of Mamluk studies the opportunity to attend annual conferences organized in turn by each of the three collaborating institutions.
The annual conferences will be organized around a general or a more specific theme which scholars will be invited to address. In addition, proposals for panels on other relevant subjects may be submitted by individuals, research teams, or institutions. Accepted panels will be held at the end of the thematic conference. On an irregular basis, SMS will also organize seminars in various fields (such as diplomatics, paleography, codicology, numismatics, epigraphy, etc.) which will be aimed at graduate students. These seminars will be planned to take place prior to or following the annual conference in the institution where the conference is held.
Papers presented at each conference on the selected theme will be published as a monograph, while papers presented at the panels will be considered for publication in Mamlūk Studies Review.
The first annual SMS conference is planned for 2014 in Venice. A call for papers will go out in 2013.
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Ethno::log: TA45 – GDAT#1 neoliberalism
This Talking Anthropology Podcast episode is another non regular one and comes from the University of Manchester Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT). The motion to be debated is: The concept of neoliberalism has become an obstacle to the anthropological understanding of the twenty-first century.
The motion will be proposed by James Laidlaw (Cambridge) and Jonathan Mair (Cambridge and Manchester). It will be opposed by Thomas Hylland Eriksen (Oslo) and Keir Martin (Manchester).
Link to the podcast:
www.talkinganthropology.com
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Erkan in the Army now...: January is a month of loss… R.I.P Mehmet Ali Birand. Turkish journalism loses one major name…
During my pilot study for my PhD fieldwork, I happened to attend daily editorial meetings at CNN Turk chaired by him. He was also a notable journalist in EU-Turkey relations…
Birand at Wikipedia
Birand’s Last Article | Artık ölümlerin durmasını diliyorum
from Mavi Boncuk by M.A.M
In Memoriam | Mehmet Ali Birand (1941-2013)
from Mavi Boncuk by M.A.M
In November 2012, Mehmet Ali Birand found his Kurdish roots after years believing he was a Turk, he said at a Turkish TV-show. His ancestors are from Palu, Elazığ.
Prominent Turkish journalist, HDN columnist Birand passes away
from Hurriyet Daily News
Mehmet Ali Birand, a world-renowned journalist, Hürriyet Daily News
On Birand, who raised journalistic standards in Turkey
from Hurriyet Daily News
It was 1985 when Mehmet Ali Birand started a monthly TV show.
Birand: Gracious face of Turkish journalism
from Hurriyet Daily News
Turkish journalism is grieving after the abrupt death of its dean
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Erkan in the Army now...: For Hrant Dink. Photos from today’s commemoration…
[View the story "For Hrant Dink. First photos from today's march... " on Storify]
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Erkan in the Army now...: January is a month of loss… R.I.P Prof. Toktamış Ateş
We have lost Toktamış Ateş this morning. Prof. Ateş was a professor of economics but he was mostly known with his pro-Atatürk standing and arguments. Unlike many other pro-Atatürk scholars or personalities, he was keen on openly discussing/argumenting on issues related to Atatürkist tought, a tolerant, open minded scholar. I happened to be around him, listening to him while having lunch or having coffee from time to time. He had an office in our Bilgi University as he was once a member of Board of Trustees here. God bless him…
Turkish professor and columnist Toktamış Ateş passes away
from Hurriyet Daily News
Professor and Bugün daily columnist Toktamış Ateş passed away at the age of 68..
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Language Log: Linguistics and related areas at AAAS 2013
The 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will be held 2/14/2013 to 2/18/2013 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. Section Z (Linguistics) is sponsoring or recommending eight of the many symposia featured at the meeting:
The Language Organ: The Bases of Human Language in Human Biology
2/15 08:30
Historical Syntax
2/15 13:00
Language Evolving: Genes and Culture in Ongoing Language Evolution
2/15 15:00
The Connectome: From the Synapse to Brain Networks in Health and Disease
2/16 08:30
Old Dogs, New Tricks: How Plastic Is the Adult Human Brain?
2/16 13:00
Teaching the Brain to Speak Again: New Frontiers in Trauma and Stroke Recovery
2/16 15:00
Advances in Brain-Machine Interfaces: Applications and Implications
2/17 08:30
Understanding Memory: The Legacy of Case H.M.
2/18 09:45
I'm sorry to say that the AAAS still sees the mission of its annual meeting as communicating with science writers (and, I suppose, raising money), so that these and other excellent symposia will only be available to the few dozen people in the live audience — except in those rare cases where a symposium organizer arranges privately for audio and slides to be made unofficially available, as Victoria Stodden did for her 2011 symposium on "Reproducible Science".
I continue to hope that the AAAS will eventually manage to stumble into the 21st century, and learn to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity for communicating with the public by making multimedia from these symposia available on line. Meanwhile, if you happen to be in the Boston area 2/14/2013 to 2/18/2013, and can spare between $90 (student advance registration — before January 21) and $435 (profession on-site registration), I'll see you there!
I'll blog about (some of) the symposia that I attend or participate in, as I have in the past couple of years:
"Reproducible Science at AAAS 2011", 2/18/2011
"What Bilinguals Tell us about Mind and Brain", 2/19/2011
"Linguistics and Language Science at AAAS 2012", 12/9/2011
"Crossing the Digital Divide", 2/17/2012
"AAAS President Nina Fedoroff welcome's attendees", 2/17/2012
"Autism in the AAAS", 2/18/2012
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Erkan in the Army now...: EFD Rights Watch: A view of İdil Cultural Center after the police search…
A gentle manner of search done by police as members of left wing band and many lawyers are arrested yesterday for some reasons ordinary citizens having difficulties to believe…
Left-wing band Grup Yorum members jailed
from Hurriyet Daily News
Five members of the Turkish protest band Grup Yorum were arrested.
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Ankara Strives to Enhance its Title as the Worst Jailer?
from The Istanbulian by Emre Kızılkaya
Lately, mysterious political murders and free speech violations have become the prevailing theme of this blog.
Don’t blame me because I almost stopped writing about more entertaining stuff, like anectodes from the Ottoman history, which I like to read.
Turkish teacher at Armenian school found murdered in his home
from Hurriyet Daily News
An elementary school teacher who taught computer lessons at an Armenian school in Istanbul’s Asian district of Kadıköy was found murdered in his home today.
Who Is Killing Armenians In Istanbul?
from Kamil Pasha by Jenny White
This post was updated.
Another killing in Istanbul of someone linked to the Armenian community. On Tuesday evening, İlker Şahin, 40, an IT teacher at an Armenian elementary school (although he is not himself Armenian), was found by his co-workers dead in his Kadikoy apartment with his throat cut. The apartment showed evidence of a long struggle and was covered in blood. Şahin had one daughter, but lived alone. The last cell phone message he sent was a group message: “Merry Christmas.” (click here for the Agos report, in Turkish)
Computer Teacher at Armenian School Murdered in Istanbul
from Bianet :: English
İlker Şahin (40), a computer-subject teacher at Aramyan Armenian School in Istanbul, was found murdered in his apartment.
Captain Miki and The Banned Atlas
from Kamil Pasha by Jenny White
In a twist of irony, Turkey is at once celebrating the lifting of decades-old bans on 453 books and 645 periodicals while waiting for the fate of two classics whose fates are yet to be decided. One of these classics is John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” The other one is the beloved children’s book “My Sweet Orange Tree” by Brazilian writer José Mauro de Vasconcelos
2012 Report Reveals How Male Violence Continues
from Bianet :: English
In the annual report released by Mor Cati women shelter organization, violence victims explained the ways in which they became subject to male violence.
At Least 878 Workers Die in 2012, Report Says
from Bianet :: English
At least 76 workers were reported to have died at work in December 2012 while the total number of worker casualties reached 878 in the entire year, according to a work safety organization report.
In Turkey, Repression of Freedoms Affects Popular Culture, Too
from The Istanbulian by Emre Kızılkaya
One of the most popular songs on Turkish radios for the last nine months or so has consistently been Hakim Bey, as sung by Mehmet Erdem.
This song was actually composed by Sezen Aksu in mid-90s. Zulfu Livaneli sang it in 1996. Then, Levent Yuksel covered it in 1998.
For the last twenty years, the song has never been so popular, although its former renditions were as artistically successful as the latest one.
Turkish writers’ group investigated for ‘insulting state’
from World news: Turkey | guardian.co.uk by Alison Flood
PEN Turkey accused of breaking law by condemning musician’s prosecution as a ‘fascist development’
In a twist worthy of George Orwell, writers’ organisation and free speech campaigner PEN Turkey is under investigation in Turkey for “insulting the state” after condemning the prosecution of a musician as a “fascist development”. Ironically, the attack on free speech comes in a week when the Turkish government lifted the ban on many books that have been prohibited over the decades, including The Communist Manifesto.
Zonguldak Accident Draws Attention to Turkish Miners’ Plight
from Global Voices Online by Baran Mavzer
Zonguldak is a mining city on Black Sea coast of Turkey, and the name of the city originates from Turkish zondalik, which means swamp. After the death of eight miners in an accident which occurred in a gas leak in a mine on January 7, that is how all mines around the city seem like to the miners – an endless swamp.
7,000 women in Turkey put under police protection
from Hurriyet Daily News
The number of women under police protection reached nearly 7,000 in Turkey with..
‘Deep,’ old habits on Kurdish women’s killings
from Hurriyet Daily News
If sorted out from the floating theories on the culprits and their motivations, what the execution-style.
Jailed Students Face Psychological Issues: Human Rights Activists
from Bianet :: English
Turkey’s Human Right Association members disclosed a letter sent from Siirt province prison inmates saying that 5 underaged inmates were facing serious psychological problems.
Turkey Is Less Free
from Kamil Pasha by Jenny White
Since 1972 Freedom House has been doing an annual survey of the status of political rights and civil liberties in countries around the world, including Turkey. These are defined in their latest report (click here) that charts the increase and decline of these variables.
Jail sentence of 21 years asked for French student
from Hurriyet Daily News
Turkish prosecutors have asked for a prison sentence of 21 years for Sevil Sevimli.
European Committee for Prevention of Torture examines İmralı
from Hurriyet Daily News
The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture arrived.
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Dynamic Relations: The Bribe
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Despite rampant stories of corruption I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve been forced to pay a bribe (though I’ve definitely offered in a few cases). Well, there’s a first time for everything.On Tuesday morning I took my normal route out of the city to get to the villages where I’m collecting data. It’s 8am and the road is filled with cars and motos. It’s fairly standard to see motos, and often cars, running through intersections after the light has turned red. I’ve seen far too many accidents to feel so brazen. But today was different. I rolled up to a three-way round point. I’m turning right and as I approach the light it turns yellow. I think I have enough time. The round point is clear. I pass the light just as it turns red. Yes!, I think. I turn off my blinker and look up to see a policeman stepping out onto the road, blowing his whistle, and motioning for me to pull over. No!, I think, how could he even see?After exchanging greetings (I mean, it’s just common courtesy), he tells me I’ve run a red light. I protest. Pardon, I say, but I think the light was yellow. He says, No, the other officer saw you. I look around and begin to see the other policemen. There are two standing in the middle of the round point, their green fatigues blending in with the sculpture. Now that I’m looking for them I begin to see the others. Two more at the other round point lights. Three others standing under some trees across the street. The extent of the operation begins to dawn on me. I’m not going to be able to talk my way out of this.The one who pulled me over rolls my moto across the street to the group of three officers and I follow behind. He parks it in the shade (a kind gesture, I think) and I notice the other motos and the other drivers hanging out in the shade. They all have the same sad, worried look in their eyes that’s a staple West African facial expression. Everyone puts it on when they know they’ve done wrong and can’t get out of the punishment. Hell, I think, I’m definitely not going to be able to talk my way out of this. We are officially in the trap.A higher officer in a khaki uniform asks to see my papers (the receipt for my moto) and tells me I’ll need to pay a fine and directs me to his commanding officer across the street near where I was pulled over. I walk over and hand him my papers. The officer holds a stack of blank tickets in his hand and explains to me the situation: You have two options, he says. You can pay the 6,000F ($12) fine now and be on your way, or you can take the ticket to the police headquarters and pay where they will give you a receipt. You bring the receipt back and then take your moto. I immediately think of a story I was told by a friend who spent a day and a half waiting to pay and receive her moto. I tell him I’d like to pay now knowing full well that this “fine” is entirely under the table.He leads me over to another commanding officer who, I get the sense, is the head honcho, the ring master, the one behind it all. He’s got a face of carved wood, pissed off carved wood. He stands alone under the blazing sun not breaking a sweat. The guy with the tickets introduces me to him by saying I’d like to pay the fine now. They huddle in close around me, closer than is socially acceptable in West Africa. The grand poobah narrows his eyes at me, flickering his gaze between my face and my hands. Is he expecting me to shake his hand, I think, is this even appropriate? I don’t do anything. There’s a moment of awkward silence and the guy with the tickets tells me to wait off to the side while he does something.Hell, I think, that was my cue! They huddled in to block the view of passing traffic. He looked at my hand waiting for the exchange. Now I’m standing on the curb in the sun, exposed. There’s no clever way to rectify this. I turn my back to traffic and pull out 6,000F from my wallet. Commander Poobah sees me, gives a slight nod, and tells me to go back to talk to the other officer (scowling the whole time, of course). I thank him and head back to where the guy is standing by the trapped motos.He sees me coming and unfolds my moto papers, turns his back to traffic, and pretends to examine my moto. I walk up and he begins to ask me questions. I extend my right hand with the 6,000F folded up in my palm. It seamlessly passes to his hand under my moto papers. It’s done before I know what’s happened. I don’t even see him pocket it though it’s no longer in his hand. Damn, I think, these guys are good. He asks why I don’t yet have a license plate after two months. I explain that CFAO—the big auto dealer from whom I bought the bike—is taking their time, that I’ve got every other Saturday morning to see if the plate is ready and they always tell me to come back in two more weeks. Before I’m even done with this excuse (which is true albeit a bit stretched) he hands back the papers and tells me I can go. I’m dismissed with a wave and I almost chuckle. These guys were smooth. There were about 10 in total, and each had their role. I bet they each get a cut. From the 4 others I saw pulled over in the 15min I was held up, I estimate that if they “worked” from 8-10am and everyone paid the bribe, they probably made around $500. It was all bizarrely routine and mundane. There was no conspiratorial winking, no raised voices trying to bully me into paying. I thought, how cool would it be to do a study on police scam operations?!I’ve been telling everyone this story. It’s fun. And I found out that if I had taken the ticket it likely would have been between 8,000F and 10,000F ($16-$20), more than I paid in the bribe! That means that there is internal competition within the police department. If ticket fees are common knowledge, and I suspect they are, then people are likely to choose the bribe, undermining and potentially out competing official ticket protocol with more of the money going to the officers’ pockets rather than inefficient bureaucracy. It’s only when I start speculating why "corruption" is the way it is that things get complicated.
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Language Log: "I have a theory about what it means!!"
Conversations among linguists may sometimes be interesting to non-linguists for reasons that are not entirely the same as those that appeal to insiders. As an example, I present without further comment a recent back-and-forth on Facebook between Linguist X and Linguist Y, slightly redacted to preserve anonymity.
X (Posts George Carlin's 2010 comments on Lance Armstrong.)
Y: A jerk Lance Armstrong surely is, but he provided the ABC news with a reason to produce a naturalistic example of a construction I wrote about in ____: "self-confessed arrogant prick with a win at all cost attitude" where self-confessed is an 'inner' intentional adjective taking scope out of two 'outer' extensional ones (syntactically ambiguous in the case of the with-PP, but the context forces into scope under self-confessed, I think).
X: This fits an analysis I proposed (not the scope but how to handle the adjective) a few years ago.
X: Your scope prediction sounds a lot more interesting.
Y: Adjectives are a garden of weird stuff. And as far as I can make out, GB/MP principles aren't really very helpful in dealing with them, in spite of their prevalence in the literature; the key insights I believe were attained by Terry Parsons and Hans Kamp extending Montague, and have been steadily cultivated by the formal semanticsts ever since. The first example in Pesetsky's plenary talk, for example, is a pretty natural consequence of the Parson-Kamp idea, and to present it he had to ignore antisymmetry and its consequence of 'rollup movement', which people in that framework seem to spend a lot of time struggling with.
Y: My main current project is a rewrite of some the analysis in my 1999 book with ___, using glue and some other tricks to eliminate the need for the 'spreading projections', which don't appear to have been very popular; there will be some adjective stuff in that.
Z: Only you guys can take the word fuck and make it complicated.
Y: Don't get me started on that one - I have a theory about what it means!!
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Neuroanthropology: Connection, Content, Action! – A View on the Internet
I was struck by Alexis Madrigal’s description of how the Internet functions – a human phenomenon, recreated every day, mediated by material machines and generative algorithms. It’s an evocative image, in line with anthropological work on smaller communities online (say, the ethnography My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, on World of Warcraft). But here Madrigal blows that up into a much larger view:
For just about every person, the Internet is not content brands that they return to mindlessly day after day. The Internet experience is composed of people (friends, famous people, Internet famous people, high school frenemies) and individual things (stories, items of clothing, pictures). These components get rearranged anew every single day into the idiosyncratic Internet that one knows as one’s own.
And because Google is built by ingesting human intelligence, the way its search work reflects those priorities. MacArthur wants the Internet to be a directory of brand names, but that’s not how it developed. And if you remember the hand-edited Internet directory of coherent, complete websites that Yahoo once was, you know why: It was impossible to find anything! For human and technical reasons, the fundamental unit that makes sense is not harpers.org (the site) but [harpers.org] (the page). Anyone who has used the Internet knows this, but MacArthur can’t admit that because it would mean agreeing that Google indexing pages is a good thing.
One last thought. Nowadays, most people see several versions of the hand-edited Internet: one is the stream of content their friends share, two is Wikipedia, and three is the way Google recommends search terms in real-time. Your Internet is increasingly shaped by other people’s judgment processed through machines’ ranking algorithms. With Facebook Graph Search, and Google’s Search Plus Your World, this trend is picking up steam.
I might rework Madrigal’s line that “Google is built by ingesting human intelligence.” Perhaps human activity is a better concept than “intelligence.” Just think I Can Has Cheezburger? – LOLCats, rather than The Atlantic or Harpers.
In this view, Madrigal’s analysis comes in lines with what Bonni Nardi’s analysis of World of Warcraft. Here is Rex on Savage Minds describing Nardi’s approach:
Nardi has a long background in studying how people interact with technology. If I understand this correctly, people originally studied usability: how people interacted with computers and how you could change computers to make them more usable. Then they realized that what people wanted to use technology for was affected by the form that technology itself took. Nardi was one of the people who took this insight and developed ‘activity theory’, a generalized approach which made action rather than the actors the center of its approach.
People’s actions, and the mediating content and technology, get rearranged anew every single day on the Internet. It’s an intriguing view, one that highlights its impermanence and its generativity.
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