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Study diary

Week 9: 25 February – 3 March 2019

March 3, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

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)

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 8: 18-24 February 2019

February 24, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

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!

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 7: 11-17 February 2019

February 17, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

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.)

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 6: 4-10 February 2019

February 10, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

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

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 5: 28 January – 3 February 2019

February 3, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

Not a study-intense week, although I presented my project to the class in Digital Anthropology. I also spent some time creating two “recruitment ads” which I uploaded to the networks I will be researching.

In Ethnographic Film Unit 11 – the last unit – I liked Chantal Akerman’s film News from home very much. I thought that she was only 21 years old when she shot the New York street scenes and that it must have taken a lot of confidence to “waste” so much film for “nothing”. But she was 26. The film was shot in 1976 but in a way that would elicit 1971, the year she arrived to NYC.

Next week a new course will begin about the theory and history of anthropology. That will conclude this semester. I’ve already registered for the next and got my student card validated.

Outside the studies, I finished Alexandre Enkerli’s almost ten years old podcast series Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast. I really enjoyed it. It confirmed what I have been learning over the last semester in a good way. Alexandre obviously knows his stuff and is nice to listen to.

On Friday I hosted another episode of our Swedish podcast on internet privacy:

Saturday was a full day out with friends and a visitor.

Started watching Mr Robot season 3. Not entirely convinced.

Study

Ethnographic Film Unit 11

Autoethnography

  • Morra, Joanne (2007): Daughter’s Tongue: The Intimate Distance of Translation. In Journal of Visual Culture​ 6, issue 1 (April 2007), pp. 91-108.

And the film:

  • Chantal Akerman: News from home (1977, 88 min)

Extra

Readings related to my research.

  • Boellstorff, Tom, Bonnie Nardi, Cecilia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor (2012): Ethnography and Virtual Worlds. Handbook of methods:
    • 5: Participant observation in virtual worlds (pp. 65-91)
  • Fisch, Michael (2018): An Anthropology of the Machine. Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network:
    • 2: Inhabiting the Interval (pp. 48-78)

Other

Articles

  • The Economist: How Brussels should respond to Britain’s confused demands
  • The Economist: The danger of tailings dams
  • Hyperallergic/Jasmine Weber: Discerning Photography’s White Gaze
  • Die Welt: In Davos stößt das Greta-Prinzip an seine Grenzen

Podcast

  • Alexandre Enkerli: Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast (2009)
    • 9: Establishing Rapport
    • 10: Social Butterfly Effect (SBE)
    • 11: Podfade and Future Plans

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 4: 21-27 January 2019

January 27, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

It was a wonderful, intense week full of readings and some ethnographic films. I’m in the process of setting up my research project in Digital Anthropology, since I will be presenting about that on Thursday next week. More on that later.

The readings, presentations and discussion in Digital Anthropology Unit 10 landed in the conviction (for me at least) that the “true or false” is the least important aspect of fake news. Instead, they and their adherents should be seen as a belief system or cult, as worthy of study (and respect) as any esoteric group. Focusing on “true or false” thereby becomes as uninteresting as discussing whether God exists.

I think the framework of virtual world research would be applicable for the study of “fake news fans”. Pizzagate is an example of how things go completely wrong when someone takes the virtual concept of fake news into the actual world. Like an exception that proves the rule, that incident confirms how the virtuality of fake news is taken for granted.

In Ethnographic Film Unit 9 Lydall’s text Beating around the Bush was really interesting in describing and analysing the “wife beating” of the Hamar.

ReadingI started reading Michael Fisch’s ethnography on the Tokyo commuter train network An Anthropology of the Machine. I heard an interview with him in the Anthropod podcast in September 2018 (week 38, 2018), and when he surfaced again in a seminal reading by Brian Larkin for Digital Anthropology Unit 9, on infrastructures (week 2, 2019), I checked him up again and realised that this book had just been released. So far he’s laying out the theory. Although I primarily bought this book “for fun”, I think it fits very well into my studies and projects.

Just like Tom Boellstorff in his Second Life research, Fisch focuses on “the gap”. Whereas Boellstorff’s gap is between the virtual and the actual world, Fisch’s gap is between the time table of the trains (the ideal world) and the actual outcome. It’s not unrelated at all and definitely relevant for the things I want to study.

Since the chapter 8 in the handbook by Boellstorff et al was the reading for the Digital Anthropology Colloquium 1 next week, I started reading the book from the start. It’s such an easy an inspiring read, and so well written, that I think the book in full should be mandatory for the very first unit of this course. (We read chapters 2 and 4 for Unit 4 – week 48, 2018.)

Finished Mr Robot season 2 but was not impressed by the resolution.

The week ended with Chris Marker’s film Sans Soleil. I did not like it. At all.

As every week I checked the latest Gutenberg reviews. It’s so sad to see people work a lot on something and then get it completely wrong.

Study

Digital Anthropology Unit 10

Studying online phenomena: Fake News, Virality and manipulative data practices

  • The Conversation/Yuwei Lin: #DeleteFacebook is still feeding the beast – but there are ways to overcome surveillance capitalism
  • Michael Zimmer: How Contextual Integrity can help us with Research Ethics in Pervasive Data

Digital Anthropology Colloquium 1

Students’ Planned Research & the Ethical Considerations.

  • Boellstorff, Tom, Bonnie Nardi, Cecilia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor (2012): Chapter 8: Ethics. In Ethnography and Virtual Worlds. Handbook of methods., pp. 129-150.

Extra

Readings related to my research.

  • Boellstorff, Tom, Bonnie Nardi, Cecilia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor (2012): Ethnography and Virtual Worlds. Handbook of methods:
    • Foreword by George Marcus (pp. xiii-xvii)
    • 1: Why this handbook? (pp. 1-12)
    • 3: Ten myths about ethnography (pp. 29-51)
  • Fisch, Michael (2018): An Anthropology of the Machine. Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network:
    • Preface (pp. ix-xi)
    • Introduction: Toward a Theory of the Machine (pp. 1-28)
    • 1: Finessing the Interval (pp. 29-47)
  • Frennea, Melissa (2012): The Prevalence of Rape and Child Pornography in Yaoi, 34 p.

Ethnographic Film Unit 10

Issues of Representation: A Case Study of the Hamar

  • Lydall, Jean (2006): Imperilled name and pained heart. More about Duka’s Dilemma’. In Jean Lydall and Ivo Strecker (eds.): The Perils of Face, Essays on cultural contact, respect and self-esteem in southern Ethiopia, pp. 311-337.
  • Lydall, Jean (1994): Beating around the Bush. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, volume II, 26 p.

And these films:

  • Robert Gardner: Rivers of Sand​ (1974, 84 min)
  • Kaira Strecker and Jean Lydall: Duka’s Dilemma​ (2001, 88 min)

Ethnographic Film Unit 11

Autoethnography

  • Russell, Catherine (1999): Autoethnography: Journeys of the Self. In Experimental Ethnography, pp. 275-315.

And the film:

  • Chris Marker: Sans Soleil (1982, 100 min)

Other

Articles

  • The Economist: The steam has gone out of globalisation
  • The Economist: Donald Trump made a dreadful miscalculation over the shutdown
  • The Economist: Companies can appeal to workers and consumers with liberal messages
  • The Economist: The arrival of Foxconn in Wisconsin divides Democrats
  • The Guardian/Elfriede Jelinek, Milan Kundera, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, and 26 others: Fight for Europe – or the wreckers will destroy it
  • The Independent/Lucy Jones: Why the Fyre Festival documentaries were so terrifying
  • Insider: The world’s biggest YouTube stars told us they’re burning out because of the unrelenting pressure to post new videos
  • Post Status/Brian Krogsgard: Post formats are slowly dying, and that’s okay (great piece from 2014 that made me understand the trajectory of post formats and why I don’t need them)

Podcast

  • Alexandre Enkerli: Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast (2009)
    • 6: Draft Aesthetics
    • 7: Teaching Ethnography
    • 8: Failures of Anthropology

Film & video

  • Hubert Sauper: Darwin’s Nightmare (2004, 107 min)
  • Gurminder K Bhambra: Colonial Histories/Postcolonial Societies: On the Politics of Selective Memory in Europe (2018, 95 min)
  • Casey Neistat: Burnt OUT YouTubers
  • Simone Giertz: My brain tumor is back

Filed Under: Digital Anthropology, Study diary Tagged With: Chris Marker, Jean Lydall, Michael Fisch, Tom Boellstorff

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