Study diary

I was very focused on the machinima for Digital Anthropology this week. On Wednesday night I went to a Japanese Stammtisch for the first time to try and find some Japanese voices for the interviews. I connected with one person who I met again at a café on Thursday, to explain my project in more detail. We were supposed to meet again on Friday, but they cancelled.

I also hired a voice actor on Fiverr, but was not happy with the results, despite a quite elaborate retake. Next week I’ll meet my old Japanese tutor to see if he can help me. And K can probably contribute with a real recording too, rather than the sketches he did last week. If the Stammtisch person agrees I have the three voices I need, without having to use the Fiverr voice.

In addition I contacted a Japanese music producer and got permission to use his music in my machinima. He would have contributed a voice too if he was in town, he said.

But the most important thing was that I came to a sort of crisis where I questioned this whole research project. I filmed myself as I elaborated on it, because I want to include my doubts in the machinima. Not sure about the results, but I’ll have a new chance next week when me and my classmate R in New York will discuss our projects in a Zoom meeting.

For Theory & History Unit 8 next week I read Zora Neale Hurston’s text on “negro expression”, which felt very dated. But I think that just by substituting “racial group” for “culture” it becomes a valid (auto-)ethnographic study.

Finished Donald L. Donham’s The Erotics of History, which fits so well into my upcoming essay in Theory & History. Excellent analysis of the fetish. Brilliant critique of the notion of sexuality/ies. And when he referenced Marcel Mauss’ The Gift I could say that I had read that text – only last week! The joy it brings to get the references. It shows how well our lecturer in Theory & History has curated the readings. And how well I’ve curated my own. 😉

Friday I went to a bike shop with S. He now rides a smashing Fuji Track 2019.

Study

Theory and History of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Unit 8: Culture-Personality (Benedict), Auto-Ethnography (Hurston), Early Women Anthropologists

• Hurston, Zora Neale (1934): Characteristics of Negro Expression. In Negro: An Anthology, edited by Nancy Cunard, 1934.

Extra – readings related to my research

Theory & History essay

• Donham, Donald L. (2018): The Erotics of History: an Atlantic African Example – the rest of the book, pp. 18-100 (excluding notes, etc). 👊

Digital Anthropology essay and machinima

• Boellstorff, Tom, Bonnie Nardi, Cecilia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor (2012): Ethnography and Virtual Worlds. Handbook of methods:
  • 7: Interviews and virtual worlds research (pp. 113-128)

Other

Articles

• The Economist: After a day of drama, a stalemate over aid to Venezuela
• The Economist: How far will Pope Francis go in rooting out sexual abuse?
• Sveriges Radio/Cecilia Uddén, Kairo: Igår hängdes nio unga män

Film and TV

• Hair (1979, 121 min)
• Vasaloppet 2019

Podcast

• Money talks: How companies change when white men don’t run the show (21 min)
• Influencerpodden/Anton Granlund: 68. Alexander Bard (69 min, non-https link)
• Sveriges Radio Snedtänkt/Kalle Lind: Om Cia Berg (72 min)

I found myself looking forward to the Theory & History Unit 4-5 class on Friday. The Mauss text took away my innocent view of gift-giving, as it exposed it as a highly calculated business and an important way of building a society and keeping it together through the “spiritual bonds” that gift-giving creates. It’s definitely one of the things that define us as humans.

I loved Ruth Benedict’s text – for Theory & History Unit 8. It’s the first of the historic texts we read that really spoke to me. It’s prophetic in its plea for cultural humbleness and thereby social tolerance. Benedict wrote the text in 1934, but it could as well have been written today.

I started creating my machinima in Digital Anthropology. I’m starting by building a 15 minute skeleton of a movie: Basically a mix of explanations and quotes by informants. It gives me a good grasp of how much material I will be able to use. I recorded a sketch narration, and yesterday I had my Japanese friend K record a sketch reading of the interviews. It showed me that I must cut the quotes in half, at least. In all this, I’m inventing my own process, which is really fun. I’d be interested to hear afterwards how the others are doing it.

The week ended with Donald L. Donham’s introduction to The Erotics of History, which is utterly brilliant, to the extent that it causes “highlighting inflation”. I found the essay by accident when searching for readings for my project in Theory & History. I can’t wait to get deeper into it and see how I can use it in my own research. We think very much along the same lines, me and the Distinguished Professor!

Streetfood Thursday at Markthalle 9 with friends and a new acquaintance.

Immediately after fixing my bike I got another puncture (small, pointed piece of glass in the tire), and right after that a tube failure. But now it’s up and rolling again, and I took it for a ride around the city today, in beautiful sunshine and perfect temperature around 9 degrees.

Study

Theory and History of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Unit 5: Precise Comparison: French Sociology and Anthropology (Mauss)

• Mauss, Marcel (1925): Introductory and Chapter 1: Gifts and the Obligation to Return Gifts. In The Gift: Forms and Functions of Change in Archaic Societies (1925, 1966), pp. 1-16.

Unit 8: Culture-Personality (Benedict), Auto-Ethnography (Hurston), Early Women Anthropologists

• Benedict, Ruth (1934): VIII: The Individual and the Pattern of Culture. In Patterns of Culture: An Analysis of Our Social Structure as Related to Primitive Civilizations, pp. 218-240. 👍

Extra

Readings related to my research (Theory & History)

• Donham, Donald L. (2018): Preface and Heading South: An Introduction. In The Erotics of History: an Atlantic African Example, pp. xiii–xvi and 1-17. 👊

Other

Articles

• The Economist: Bernie Sanders announces another run for president
• The Economist: Donald Trump’s real target is not illegal immigration but diversity
• BBC: Venezuela aid: Genuine help or Trojan horse?
• Engadget/Violet Blue: How sex censorship killed the internet we love
• Hyperallergic: WTF is… Superflat?

Video

• Matt Mullenweg: State of the Word 2018

Podcast & radio

• The Intelligence: Saudi prince on tour, corporate-tax avoidance and an activist’s Oscar run
• The Intelligence: Vatican child-abuse meeting, the world’s largest building and a Hawaiian resurgence
• The Intelligence: Venezuela’s aid stand-off, Warren Buffett’s letters and Japan’s geriatric literature
• Sveriges Radio, P1 Dokumentär: Regeringsbildningen – om svek, fika och Alliansens död
• Sveriges Radio, P1: Godmorgon, världen!

The Theory and History course (unit 2 and 3 this week) is extremely interesting. It provides a solid base of anthropological, well, theory and history, and it is taught by a professor who is very knowledgeable and inspiring. The three and a half hours just fly by.

Watching Secrets of the Tribe, S commented that Napoleon Chagnon and his co-researchers (and by that I don’t mean his informants) didn’t seem to see the Yanomami as their equals. When vaccinating them against measels Chagnon & co ran out of gamma-globulin. Shortly afterwards the dentist of the group entered the village despite having flu-like symptoms. 200 local people died. The exact causes can of course not be easily determined, so it’s a bit harsh to accuse Chagnon of “genocide” as some in the movie did. But I thought: Wouldn’t Chagnon have found a way to get more gamma-globulin if it was his own people that were at risk? And wouldn’t the dentist have thought twice before risking infecting his own people?

I mentioned this in the Theory and History class, with my conclusion that no, Chagnon & co did indeed not see the people they studied as their equals. Maybe few anthropologist do, by default. We must therefore be aware of this basic predicament for any kind of research and make sure that we really, truly believe in it – that we live it.

The lecturer emphasised that this doesn’t mean we have to be completely blank and non-judgmental when we face radically different customs and ways of thinking, but rather that we “suspend judgement” and learn to “inhabit paradox”.

I like that: Inhabit paradox.

I worked quite a bit on my project in Digital Anthropology. I corresponded in Japanese with several informants, and corrected the Japanese of my online questionnaire – again. I started writing a script for my machinima and asked some of my informants if they would consider contributing to it with some material.

S showed me a movie from 1986 called Babakiueria. A brilliant satire of anthropology and especially its history. But also of how white people treat black people in general. Babakiueria switched the roles, so that the narrator asked questions like “are white people intelligent?”. As a white man I was emotionally affected – I took it personally! – despite I knew it was satire. So that’s how brilliant it was.

Finished watching Mr Robot season 3. Perfection.

Finally fixed my fixie! Premiered it yesterday and took a longer ride today in the sunshine:

Study

Theory and History of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Unit 2: The long 19th Century: Primitive Culture in Victorian England (Taylor) and Psychic Unity of Mankind in Prussia (Bastian)

• Tylor, Edward Burnett (1871): The Science of Culture. In Primitive culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom. Vol. 1, 1920 (1871), pp.1-25.

Unit 3: Cultural Relativism and Historical Particularism: Boasian Anthropology in North America

• Boas, Franz (1920): The methods of ethnology. In American Anthropologist 22, no. 4, pp. 311-321.

Unit 4: Anthropologist as Fieldworker and Functionalism (Malinowski)

• Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922): Introduction: The Subject, Method, and Scope of This Inquiry. In Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of the Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, pp. 1-26.
• Malinowska, Violetta (1967): Preface. In A Diary In The Strict Sense Of The Term, pp. vii–ix.
• Firth, Raymond (1988): Second Introduction 1988. In A Diary In The Strict Sense Of The Term, pp. xxi–xxxi.
• Note. In A Diary In The Strict Sense Of The Term, pp. xxxiii–xxxiv.

Extra

Readings related to my research:

• Baudinette, Thomas (2017): Japanese gay men’s attitudes towards ‘gay manga’ and the problem of genre. In East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 59-72.

Other

Articles

• The Economist: Millennial socialism

Film

• Secrets of the Tribe (2010, 110 min)
• SOS visit Funkhaus Berlin (2015, 32 min)
• Stacey Dooley Investigates: Young Sex for Sale in Japan (2017, 60 min)
• Babakiueria (1986, 30 min)

Podcast

• Heiseshow: Backup als bester Schutz – Was fällt so schwer? (45 min)
• The Intelligence: Echoes of Iran’s revolution, Harley-Davidson’s downshift and driverless-car ethics (24 min)
• The Intelligence: Visiting “iPhone City”, Angola’s diamond auction and El Salvador’s presidential hopeful (19 min)
• Babbage: How to regulate tech giants? (20 min)
• Bögministeriet: Det med banan på pizzan (68 min) ❤️

Petition

• Avaaz/Christian Buettner: YouTube: fix the copyright protection system (Currently 120,826 of 200,000 signatories. I usually don’t sign petitions, but since I’ve used TheFatRat’s copyrightfree music in one of my videos, I thought I should support him.)

I was sick the whole week. Only a cold though, so I’m already fit again.

We had the first class in Theory and History and I was positively surprised. The course was a perfect reason for me to pick up an orange paperback volume from 1984 from my bookshelf: Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, edited by Gilbert H. Herdt. I read chapter 4, which seemed to be the core text, written by Herdt himself. To this I added Deborah A. Elliston’s 1995 critique of Herdt. I’ve emailed the lecturer to ask in which unit these readings could fit, since we’re supposed to choose a unit (a person/theory) to present on. I’m guessing (and hoping) Said. Elliston even uses the concept of “erotic ethnocentrism”.

My project in Digital Anthropology lingers slightly as I try to gather more research participants. We had the second out of three colloquia this week.

Continued watching Mr Robot season 3. Overall the series has turned into a more traditional TV series, but a pretty good one. Rewatching Fight Club I realised what a total ripoff Mr Robot is in certain respects. Like, total. Which also was the reason for the rewatch, I just didn’t realise how close it was. Mr Robot is like a cover or remix of a hit. I usually prefer covers over the originals anyway, so that doesn’t bother me at all. As for Fight Club I think Chuck Palahniuk’s novel from 1996 is brilliant and seminal, in that it captured the zeitgeist of an era that wouldn’t manifest until 20 years later. And the film is of course excellent.

Study

Theory and History of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Unit 1

Unit 1.1: Introduction (Theory/History and Knowledge/Politics)

• Singh, Bhrigupati, and Jane I. Guyer (2016): Introduction: A joyful history of anthropology. In HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6, no. 2, pp. 197-211.
• Video: Dead Anthropologists Play Golf in Heaven: Anthropological Theory (2013, 15 min)

Unit 1.2: How to Read/Review Etnographic Texts and Other Media

• Taylor, Gordon (1989): 3: Interpretation: reading and taking notes. In A Student’s Writing Guide: How to Plan and Write Successful Essays (2009 edition), pp. 53-88.

Extra

Readings related to my research:

• Boellstorff, Tom, Bonnie Nardi, Cecilia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor (2012): Ethnography and Virtual Worlds. Handbook of methods:
  • 6: Interviews and virtual worlds research (pp. 92-112)

Readings related to Theory and History:

• Herdt, Gilbert H. (1984): 4. Semen Transactions in Sambia Culture. In Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, pp. 167-210.
• Elliston, Deborah A. (1995): Erotic Anthropology: “Ritualized Homosexuality” in Melanesia and beyond. In American Ethnologist, Vol. 22, No. 4 (November 1995), pp. 848-867.

Other

Articles

• The Economist: UNIQLO’s founder plots a way to beat Zara and H&M
• The New York Review of Books: America’s Original Identity Politics (skimmed)
• AJE Scholar: Making the Choice: Open Access vs. Traditional Journals
• Delicious Brains: Is Gutenberg the End or a New Beginning for WordPress?
• Quote Investigator: Now We’re Just Haggling Over the Price
• Jan Guillou: Influencers tror att de kan avskaffa demokrati – med ett debattinlägg

Film

• Dr Jekyll. and Mr. Hyde (1931, 98 min)
• Fight Club (1999, 139 min)
• Everyone Says I Love You (1996, 101 min) – why?
• Jón Bjarki Magnússon: Even Asteroids Are Not Alone (2018, 17 min – machinima!)
• Beauty and the Bleach. Skin-whitening trend ravages Senegalese women

Podcast & radio

• Techdirt Podcast Episode 198: Life Without The Tech Giants
• Sveriges Radio P1/Kropp & Själ: Sex som självskada