Study diary

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

The week’s highlight was unit 9 of Digital Anthropology and the one-minute video assignment for that workshop.

Unit 9 of Ethnographic Film covered ethics and spurred me to write on the different ethics of journalism and anthropology.

I’ve already read all mandatory readings for next week’s Digital Anthropology Unit 10, which seems to be very interesting, judging from the readings. I was especially intrigued by Stark’s text, which put the data usage of social media in perspective by combining technology and psychology. His conclusions are similar to my own thinking over the last couple of years. It’s a compliment to the lecturers that all readings are from 2018 for this highly current class.

I’ve had it with Gutenberg and went back to WordPress’ Classic Editor, which as of now has over 2 million active installs. I really think I gave Gutenberg a try, but in the end the endless hassles cramped my creativity too much. Finally peace of mind!

Study

Digital Anthropology Unit 9

Artistic Practice in the Virtual Age // Post-internet Art

• Aporta, Claudio, and Eric Higgs (2005): Satellite culture: global positioning systems, Inuit wayfinding, and the need for a new account of technology. In Current Anthropology 46 no. 5, pp. 729-753.
• Kaplan, Louis & Melissa Shiff (2016): Mapping Ararat: An Augmented Reality Walking Tour for an Imaginary Jewish Homeland. In Anthrovision 4, no. 2, pp. 1-23.
• Kendall, Blake (2018): Life in Motion Blur: Visualising the Virtual & Material Paths of Progress. Visual essay, 15 min.

Digital Anthropology Unit 10

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

• Bounegru, Liliana, Jonathan Gray, Tommaso Venturini, and Michele Mauri (2018): A Field Guide to Fake News and other information disorders, 216 p.
• Coates, Jamie (2018): So ‘Hot’ Right Now. Reflections on Virality and Sociality from Transnational Digital China. In Digital Culture & Society 3, no. 2, pp. 77-98.
• Stark, Luke (2018): Algorithmic psychometrics and the scalable subject. In Social Studies of Science 48, no. 2, pp. 204-231.

In addition, I found a film made by one of the authors:

• Coates, Jamie: Tokyo Pengyou (2018, 48 min)

Ethnographic Film Unit 9

Ethics and Ethnographic Filmmaking

• Barbash, Ilisa & Lucien Taylor, eds. (1997): Sections Ethics and Reciprocity in chapter Getting going: from Fieldwork to filming (part 1). In Cross-Cultural Filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary and Ethnographic Films and Videos, pp. 48-69.
• Pink, Sarah (2006): Ethics and Ethnographic Research. In Doing Visual Ethnography, pp. 36-46.

And these films:

• Gary Kildea and Andrea Simon: Koriam’s Law – and the dead who govern (2005, 113 min)
• Les Mclaren and Annie Stiven: Taking Pictures (1996, 57 min)

Project

Related to my interactions with Japanese men on Twitter:

• Gayjin Japan: 9monsters

Other

Articles

• Wishcrys: Confessions from a young woman academic in five parts
• Wishcrys: Academia and the refusal of overwork culture
• The Economist: How the shutdown in Washington ends
• The Economist: Apple succumbs to the smartphone malaise
• The Economist: The maturing of the smartphone industry is cause for celebration
• The Economist: Japan tries to keep the elderly out of hospital
• The Economist: Who owns Kafka?
• The Economist: Michel Houellebecq’s new book is eerily prescient
• The Spectator/Tom Slater: Gillette and the rise of woke capitalism

Podcast

• Bögministeriet: Det med att leva med sina beslut (2018, 64 min)

Video

• Gillette: We Believe: The Best Men Can Be | Gillette (Short Film)