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Study diary

Week 25: 17-23 June 2019

June 23, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

God, what a busy week. Lots of classes and readings, plus that I prepared my presentation for Space and Place, which I will have tomorrow. Such a challenge to condense it to ten minutes after having done so much research.

I also wrote questions for the guest lecturer of next week’s Media Activism (no class this week) – that was our assignment.

The highlight of the week was when the grade for Digital Anthropology from the first semester came on Monday, along with very extensive feedback from one of the lecturers. I put a lot of effort into my machinima and I think the grade and feedback was very fair.

It’s such a great feeling to be graded by a superior. You seldom have that chance in life after you finish school, is my experience.

I started to contact people in Japan, starting with one mangaka and a subculture expert who I know from before. The latter replied and immediately sent me to some relevant web resources. He also offered to check the Japanese translation of my machinima. I’m planning to make a new version where I narrate in Japanese. I’m translating the narration myself, but let native speakers on Lang-8 correct it, one chunk at a time. Lang-8 is such a great idea, I can’t believe I haven’t used the site for years!

The landlord of the Tokyo house I stayed in in 2013 replied that it was taken.

On top of all this I completely refurnished my studio and the result was amazing. It has become a place (!) which inspires me and which I long for. The final touch was a desk for S, so that we from now on both can use the studio as we want. Unfortunately it is extremely hot right now.

Classes:

  • Monday: Space & Place. Unit 6. Third and last unit on applied mapping.
  • Wednesday: Qualitative Methods. On interviewing across ethnicities.
  • Thursday: Immersive Tech. Unit 6. Guest lecturer.
  • Friday: Research Proposal. The last unit out of four.

Readings

Media Activism

Unit 7: Digital Activism

  • Postill, J. 2018. Chapter 2: “Nerds of a Feather”. In The rise of nerd politics: Digital activism and political change, pp. 27–57. London: Pluto Press.

Space and Place

Unit 7: The Built Environment

  • Gieryn, Thomas F. 2000. “A Space for Place in Sociology.” In Annual Review of 
Sociology. Vol. 26, pp.463–496. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews. (Originally for unit 1, but I had apparently not got through it then, so it was good that this important text was repeated in this unit!)
  • Latham, Alan. 1999. “Powers of Engagement: On Being Engaged, Being Indifferent, 
and Urban Life.” In Area. Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 161–168. Royal Geographical Society.

Qualitative Methods

Interviewing 2

  • Gunaratnam, Y. 2003. “Messy Work: Qualitative Interviewing Across Difference Researching Race and Ethnicity.” In Methods, Knowledge and Power, pp. 79-105. London: Sage Publications. (I’ve only read half so far!)

Immersive Technologies

Unit 6: Uncertainty as a Technology, Technology as Uncertainty

  • Garrett, Banning. 2015. “The Individual Empowered by Mobile Computing Power and Connectivity”. In Technology Will Keep Changing Everything—and Will Do It Faster, pp. 14–16. Atlantic Council.
  • Garrett, Banning. 2015. “The Future Is Unevenly Distributed”. In Technology Will Keep Changing Everything—and Will Do It Faster, pp. 16–18. Atlantic Council.

Japanese

Apps

  • Memrise: 40,900
  • Nextbook 漢字: 小2 level 27–41

Podcast

  • サブカル 003-007

Other

Articles

  • The Economist:
    • Leader: The rule of law in Hong Kong
    • Leader: The EU must keep its promise to North Macedonia
    • Facebook wants to create a worldwide digital currency
    • The idea of criminalising prostitutes’ clients is spreading
    • Botswana legalises gay sex
    • An attack on free speech in Nigeria
    • Black men in America are living almost as long as white men
    • Worker-ownership funds: The winner (no longer) takes it all
    • Leader: Which Boris would Britain get?
  • Der Spiegel: Berliner Senat einigt sich auf Mietendeckel
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung: Immobilienboom spaltet Deutschland in Arm und Reich
  • The Gaily Grind: Armed Neo-Nazis Crash Detroit Pride Parade. Seen Ripping Rainbow Flags, Urinating On Israeli Flag
  • BBC: Ethiopia army chief shot dead in ‘coup bid’ attacks
  • Techcrunch: Maker Faire halts operation and lays off all staff

Video

  • The School of Life: How to Survive a Loss of Reputation
  • Yuval Noah Harari: Q&A on Being Gay
  • Mr. Heang: Building Underground House With Underground Swimming Pool – 2
  • The Melisizwe Brothers: I’ll Be There (Jackson5)
  • RBB: Straßenkreuz für Jacob

Radio

  • Sommar i P1:
    • Saturday 22 June 2019: Fares Fares
    • Sunday 23 June 2019: Grynet Molvig

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 24: 10-16 June 2019

June 16, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

I presented in Media Activism Unit 6, titled “media activism and ethnographic research”. I chose to present on Anonymous and how to research them and similar groups. I included clips from an interview with Anonymous ethnographer Gabriella Coleman that we made for the 5july podcast in March 2017:

Click here to display content from YouTube

Although I didn’t write much about it last week, that was the week when I kick-started my Japanese learning again, in preparation for my preparatory field trip to Tokyo in September 2019. Not least did I try to immerse myself in Japanese podcasts, but most of them were terrible. This week I finally found one I really liked, something on subculture and philosophy – but mainly just a serious and clearly articulated talk. I have only listened to one episode so far.

I also found an app by Nextbook that trains your kanji writing skills. It’s for primary school grades one through six, which is the levels I’m doing at Memrise too. I’ve just started grade five at Memrise, but in the Nextbook app I’m only in grade two, because I realised I can’t even write simple kanji like 家 (house), despite I would recognise them immediately. So I bought the full version for 28 euro and hope it will pay off!

Reading manga
Captured while reading manga.

I finished Kurumatani Haruko’s manga “アイドル様の夜のお顔” – the main part last week and the little afterstory “眠れぬ夜は彼のせい” this week. Both stories were as lovely as I have come to expect from Kurumatani, my favourite shoujo mangaka.

I have yet to start contacting people in Japan. It’s a bit of a hurdle to start writing those emails. At least I inquired about accommodation today, by contacting the landlord of the house where I lived during autumn 2013.

On Friday I spontaneously joined the conference AI Traps at Bethanien and listened to two panels with presentations. It was very warm though, one person in the audience even collapsed.

On Saturday I went with S to an art opening for Frau Katzenfisch aka Sushi Girl in Friedrichshain, where we met K & S who joined us for dinner and a stroll around Reuter & Weser-kiez for some 48h Neukölln.

Sunday was spent reading in the sofa – my favourite pastime!

Classes:

  • Tuesday: Media Activism. Unit 6, which turned out to be all about my presentation on Anonymous and how to research similar groups.
  • Wednesday: Qualitative Methods. We almost missed this as the teacher was one hour late. So that was one lost hour of confusion and worried messages in our Whatsapp group. So unnecessary.
  • Thursday: Immersive Tech. Unit 5.

Study

Media Activism

Unit 6: Media Activism & Ethnographic Research

  • Jordan, T. 2015. “Hacktivism: Operation Tunisia, Modular Tactics and Information Activism.” In Information Politics: Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital Society, pp. 176-91 (read from p. 185). London: Pluto Press.
  • Wong, W.H., & Brown, P.A. 2013. “E-Bandits in Global Activism: WikiLeaks, Anonymous, and the Politics of No One.” In Perspectives on Politics 11 (4), pp. 1015-1033. (Read selectively.)

Unit 7: Digital Activism

  • Postill, J. 2018. “Hiding in plain sight”. In J. Postill, The rise of nerd politics: Digital activism and political change, pp. 1–26. London: Pluto Press.

Qualitative Methods

Interviewing – ground skills

  • Bernard, H. R. 1995. “Unstructured and Semistructured Interviewing. Research Methods in Anthropology.” In Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. London, Altamira Press. Pp. 208-236. (Just looked it over, as I had already read the text “by mistake” in the first semester due to confusion about the structure of units. It’s a great text.)

Immersive Technologies

Unit 5.

Only videos this time.

  • Clouds over Sidra
  • Let’s wear pixels
  • The Guardian: 6×9: a virtual experience of solitary confinement – 360 video
  • Out of Exile: Daniel’s Story
  • Immigrant Dungeon Preview
  • A History of Cuban Dance
  • MICROSOFT HOLOLENS / HEROES
  • Virtual Reality: NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism | BK Stories

Japanese

Manga

  • 車谷晴子:“眠れぬ夜は彼のせい” (2005). In アイドル様の夜のお顔 (2007), pp. 155–189.

Apps

  • Memrise: 45,800
  • Nextbook 漢字: 小2 level 1–26

Podcast

  • サブカル 002

Other

Articles

  • The Economist:
    • Briefing: How the pursuit of leisure drives internet use
    • Foreign travellers to America face scrutiny of their online activity
    • Electric-scooter startups are becoming more cautious
    • The technology industry is rife with bottlenecks
    • Schumpeter: Blue-collar capitalists
    • Latin is dead—yet it also lives on
  • BBC: Ethiopia religious anger over US gay tour plan
  • DW: Kramp-Karrenbauer gay joke
  • The Guardian: High heels necessary
  • New York Post: Brooklyn massive park
  • Outdoorsy Diva/Lauren G: Camping while black
  • Buzzfeed: The Writer Who Lost Her Book Deal After Calling Out A DC Metro Worker For Eating On The Train Is Suing The Publisher For $13 Million
  • Resonate: Japanese boy band MeseMoa’s latest MV features all nine members kissing each other (2017)
  • Savvy Tokyo: Nakano
  • Tripzilla: Otaku’s guide to Akihabara
  • CNN. Geek’s guide to Tokyo (they even misspell the places)

AI Traps

Conference in Bethanien on “automating discrimination”, organised by Disruption Network Lab:

  • THE TRACKED & THE INVISIBLE: From Biometric Surveillance to Diversity in Data Science (with Adam Harvey, Sophie Searcy and moderator Adriana Groh).
  • AI FOR THE PEOPLE: AI Bias, Ethics & The Common Good (with Maya Indira Ganesh, Slava Jankin and moderator Nicole Shephard).

Video

  • Future Affairs Berlin 2019: Disruptive Technologies: Chances and Challenges (81 min)
  • Rick Falkvinge

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 23: 3-9 June 2019

June 9, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

Studied Japanese and planned my presentation. Partied with my classmates in a park Friday night.

Classes:

  • Monday: Space & Place. Unit 5, on mapping.
  • Tuesday: Media Activism. Unit 5.
  • Thursday: Immersive Tech. Unit 4, with a guest lecturer.

Study

Media Activism

Unit 5: Power, Politics & Conflict

  • Postill, J. 2012. “Digital politics and political engagement.” In H. A. Horst & D. Miller (Eds.), Digital anthropology, pp. 165-184. London: Berg.

Unit 6: Media Activism & Ethnographic Research

  • Postill, John & Sarah Pink. 2012. “Social Media Ethnography: The Digital Researcher in a Messy Web.” In Media International Australia, no. 145, pp. 123-34. (Apparently a reread from week 47, 2018, when I read it for Digital Anthropology Unit 3.)

Immersive Technologies

Unit 4: Gaming Technology as a Game Changer – Immersive Tech Use Cases

  • Branda, Ewan. 2015. “Oculus Rift.” In Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 74 (4), pp. 526-28.
  • Parry, Ross & John Hopwood. 2004. “Virtual Reality and the soft museum.” In Journal of Museum Ethnography 16, pp. 69-78.

And these videos:

  • CR hub: discovering caves with Photo2Topo
  • Bodily Exploration in Virtual Reality | Zeynep Akbal | TEDxHUBerlin
  • The World’s First Virtual Reality Department Store – brought to you by eBay and Myer
  • Harnessing XR to teach creative skills | Tom Impallomeni | ARIA 2019

Japanese

Manga

  • 車谷晴子:アイドル様の夜のお顔(2007)pp. 42-150

Memrise

  • 87,130

Podcast

  • 中級日本語口頭表現教材「日本語で話そう!」 – 明治大学 (Meiji University, intermediate)
    • [AUDIO]中級(日本語字幕)UNIT1 会話をたのしみながら自己紹介
    • [AUDIO]中級(日本語字幕)UNIT2 日本人の学生にインタビュー
    • [AUDIO]中級(日本語字幕)UNIT3 意見(いけん)をのべるスピーチ ~割り勘(わりかん)~
    • [AUDIO]中級(日本語字幕)UNIT4 紹介(しょうかい)のスピーチ ~ブータン王国~
    • [AUDIO]中級(日本語字幕)UNIT5 ディスカッション ~日本のいいところ・よくないところ~
    • [AUDIO]中級(日本語字幕)UNIT6 ディスカッション ~美容整形 賛成?反対?~
  • 日本研究所2
    • [第33話] おめでとう
    • [第34話] 裏切り者
    • [第35話] 引退宣言
    • [第36話] マヨさん
    • [第37話] アメリカ
    • [第38話] セクハラ
  • 限界オタク達
    • 第32回_サイバネ放送局
  • 少女漫画王子
    • 第29回、『うさぎドロップ』
    • 第30回、『ハニー』
  • あ、今週のジャンプ読んだ?【あこジャン】(週刊少年漫画レビュー)
    • あ、思春期ルネサンス!ダビデ君の最終回読んだ?

Other

Articles

  • Wired: The Best Alternatives to Apple’s Mac and MacBook
  • Wired: Black Mirror Isn’t Surprising Anymore. We’re Screwed
  • Congressman Hunter Says He Probably Killed ‘Hundreds’ Of Civilians While In Combat
  • Expressen/Jens Liljestrand: Det är det här landet SD:s väljare menar
  • Expressen/Daniel Sjölin: Bubblig Bernadottedebut om sexövergrepp

Podcast

  • Bögministeriet: Det där Micke slutar säga “förlåt mig” (55 min)

Video

  • World of Tanks: D-Day: Allied Landings in Normandy
  • Dan Mace: deported from America
  • Brian Tong: Mac Pro/iOS 13/iPadOS/watchOS 6/Pro Display & WWDC 2019 Reactions!
  • Snazzy Labs: The 2019 Apple Mac Pro Is Perfect! Well… Kinda.
  • Matt d’Avella: The Loneliness Epidemic

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 22: 27 May – 2 June 2019

June 2, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

We spent most of the week at Freiburger Filmforum, where S’ film was screened – I joined him on stage for the Q&A. It was a fantastic film festival with lots of really good ethnographic films from around the world. Almost all filmmakers were there and we got to know several of them. A very inspiring trip and a good fit to the programme I’m in.

Classes:

  • Monday: Space & Place. Unit 4, on mapping.
  • Tuesday: Media Activism. Unit 4, on media practice theory, a concept that was new to me. I did this class from Freiburg.
  • Friday: Research Proposal. Unit 2. I tried to do the class from Basel airport, but it was a complete fail due to Adobe Connect.

(Thursday’s Immersive Tech was cancelled due to a public holiday in Germany.)

After coming home from Freiburger Filmforum I rushed to the Apple Store to get back my Macbook Pro – it had got a new screen but the keyboard remains, cleaned though. We’ll see, maybe that’s enough.

And then we rushed to the monthly Critical Mass but aborted because of heavy rain.

Today I booked my preparatory fieldwork trip to Japan! I’ll be gone about four weeks in September and the beginning of October. It feels great to finally have made the decision and bought the ticket! I immediately started to get back to my Japanese studies, and I picked up a manga book I hadn’t got to read yet: My favourite mangaka Kurumatani Haruko’s アイドル様の夜のお顔 (Mr Idol’s night face?). I couldn’t find her books in any physical shop on my last Japan trip in October 2017, but Japanese Amazon delivered them to my hotel.

Next, I must contact various people and see where it may take me.

Study

Space and Place

Unit 4: Applied Methods: I – Maps from Switzerland / Indonesia. Weakness and Limitations of Mapping.

  • Wood, Denis. 2014. The Anthropology of Cartography. In Mapping Cultures, Place Practice, Performance. Palgrave. Pp. 280-303.

Unit 5: Applied Methods: II – Classical Anthro. Methods.Techniques for Interviewing & Observation.

  • Silverman, David. 2009. Chapter 3: “Ethnography and Observation.” In Doing Qualitative Research. Third Edition. Sage. Beginning: Pp. 43-56 (82).
  • Andrews, Hazel. 2012. “Mapping My Way: Map-making and Analysis in Participant Observation.” In Mapping Cultures: Place Practice, Performance. Palgrave. Pp. 216-235.

Media Activism

Unit 4: Practice, Agency & Change

  • Borofsky, R. (1994). The cultural in motion. In R. Borofsky (Ed.), Assessing cultural anthropology, pp. 313-319. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Unit 6: Media Activism & Ethnographic Research

  • Coleman, E. G. (2010). Ethnographic approaches to digital media. Annual Review of Anthropology 39, pp. 1-19.

Japanese

Manga

  • 車谷晴子:アイドル様の夜のお顔(2007)pp. 1-41.

Podcast

  • 中級日本語口頭表現教材「日本語で話そう!」 – 明治大学 (Meiji University, pre-advanced)
    • [AUDIO]中上級(日本語字幕)UNIT1 自己紹介(じこしょうかい)
    • [AUDIO]中上級(日本語字幕)UNIT2 目上の人にインタビュー
    • [AUDIO]中上級(日本語字幕)UNIT3 一分間スピーチ(1) ~優先席(ゆうせんせき)~
    • [AUDIO]中上級(日本語字幕)UNIT3 一分間スピーチ(2) ~私の弱点~
    • [AUDIO]中上級(日本語字幕)UNIT4 意見(いけん)をのべるスピーチ~カタカナ語について~
    • [AUDIO]中上級(日本語字幕)UNIT5 ディスカッション ~就職活動(しゅうしょくかつどう)~
    • [AUDIO]中上級(日本語字幕)UNIT6 ディスカッション ~ほめてそだてる?しかってそだてる?~

Video

  • Andrew Feinberg: NHK Easy Japanese (12 min)

Other

Articles

  • The Economist:
    • Fragmentation comes to the European Parliament. It might improve it
    • Europe’s tiniest states square off in the Olympic mini-games
    • Many Chinese know little about the bloodshed in Beijing 30 years ago
    • The sociology of country music lyrics
    • A new census shows how a Brazilian favela really works
  • The Japan Times: Two die, nearly 600 taken to hospitals nationwide as heat wave hits parts of nation
  • Wired/Paul Ford: Why I (Still) Love Tech: In Defense of a Difficult Industry

Video

  • Debatt: Kasselstrand vs Bard (165 min!)

Film

  • Freiburger Filmforum!

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 21: 20-26 May 2019

May 26, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

I continued tweaking my essay for Theory and History during the week. In fact, the first draft needed some major changes. As always, S was invaluable in pointing them out. I finally submitted on Friday, a full week before deadline – as planned, but still!

Sending email
Submitting …

This is the first academic paper I write since being an undergraduate student, but it would actually be fair to call it my first academic paper ever. This is on a whole different level than when I studied at Stockholm University, which was also very long ago. So therefore, I feel extremely proud and accomplished, and the whole process was so satisfactory: To read lots of papers on a certain topic, to summarise existing research and to build on it – adding my own analysis, backed up by what has already been established. The feeling is one of being part of something bigger, of contributing my little piece to the vast body or why not building of knowledge that people are continuously constructing and repairing.

I remember when I was in Rotterdam with S in April last year and we visited the campus of the Erasmus university. Their slogan was something like “Leave your mark”, and S asked me: “Are you ready to leave your mark in academia?” That’s the first time he suggested I should apply for a Master’s programme, apparently having thought about it for a long time but not knowing how to drop the hint in the right way. Well, about a year later my feeling is one of having “left my mark”. A small mark, a contribution to something bigger, and most definitely only the beginning. It’s such a fantastic feeling. So we biked to Tempelhofer Feld and enjoyed the Friday afternoon in the sun, drinking beer and eating strawberries. (Of course I have made many journalistic contributions before, but on a more independent level, and sometimes “dependency” makes all the difference. This time my contribution counts, is the feeling.)

This week’s classes:

  • Monday: Space & Place, unit 3.
  • Tuesday: Media Activism, unit 3.
  • Thursday: Immersive Technologies. With an interesting guest lecturer.
  • Friday: Research Proposal. First session.

Because I was so focused on my essay this week I had not read all the mandatory readings for Space & Place and Media Activism. It was the first time that happened in this programme, and it was exactly as bad as I had assumed: I couldn’t engage in the discussions and didn’t get as much out of the class as I usually do. I haven’t caught up yet, since I rather started the readings for next week’s unit 4 of those courses right away – plus one from unit 6 of Media Activism since I will present then.

Today I voted in the European Parliament elections.

Tomorrow I will drop off my Macbook Pro to Apple, so that it can be repaired while we’re at Freiburger Filmforum.

Study

Space and Place

Unit 4: Applied Methods: I – Maps from Switzerland / Indonesia. Weakness and Limitations of Mapping.

  • Bartley, Brendan (2012): Chapter 1: Introducing Theory. In Continuum Studies in Medieval History: Thinking Geographically, pp. 3-21.

Media Activism

Unit 4: Practice, Agency & Change

  • Postill, J. (2010). Introduction: Theorising media and practice. In B. Bräuchler & J. Postill (Eds.), Theorising media and practice, pp. 1-32.

Unit 6: Media Activism & Ethnographic Research

  • Barassi, V. (2015). The ethnography of digital activism. In V. Barassi, Activism on the web: Everyday struggles against digital capitalism, pp. 17-48. New York: Routledge.

Other

Articles

  • The Economist:
    • A 200km loop around Paris
    • Charlemagne: How to win the Eurovision Song Contest
    • Schumpeter: Sleepless in Silicon Valley
    • Free exchange: Amazon’s boss reckons that humanity needs an HQ2
    • “Furious Hours” is an ingenious double mystery (Harper Lee)
    • America is turning against facial-recognition software
    • Obituary: Jean Vanier died on May 7th ❤️
  • The Guardian/Arwa Mahdawi: Why Bella Hadid and Lil Miquela’s kiss is a terrifying glimpse of the future
  • Aftonbladet/Peter Kadhammar: Medan vänstern pratrunkar går världen åt helvete
  • Cnet: Apple redesigns keyboard in new MacBook Pro update and promises quick repairs on sticky keys (just my problem!)

Video

  • Zebra Zone: Why I Switched To Resolve 16 after 10 Years on Premiere Pro!
  • The School of Life: 20 Signs You’re Emotionally Mature
  • Deep Work by Cal Newport (animated book summary) – How to work deeply (via R in our study group)

Filed Under: Study diary

Week 20: 13-19 May 2019

May 19, 2019 By Karl Andersson Leave a Comment

A pretty full week with lots of classes:

  • Monday: Space & Place. I had only read one of the two mandatory texts, Ingold, but read Low after class.
  • Tuesday: Media Activism. Similar situation – I skimmed the second text but managed to write the mandatory review nevertheless. As an alternative to write reviews of the readings every week we can present more extensively in one unit. I chose that option and signed up to present in Unit 6: Media Activism & Ethnographic Research on 11 June 2019.
  • Wednesday: Qualitative Methods. This time on participatory action research (PAR).
  • Thursday: Immersive Technologies. A tech workshop on 360 photos (see featured image), which we enjoyed in VR headsets (mostly cardboard/plastic holders for our phones).

In Qualitative Methods the lecturer asked us to submit our presentation by video since the in-house classes in April, where we were supposed to have presented, were cancelled. So after zooming with my team members I recorded my part very spontaneously on Friday night. A perfect opportunity to try the green screen that I bought for other purposes:

Click here to display content from YouTube

I finished the “shitty first draft” of my essay for Theory & History tonight. My first drafts always tend to be quite close to the finished version (that’s why they take such time), so I expect it just to need a little finishing touch before I hand it in. I also zoomed with my classmate R to give her advise on her essay.

So much coming up, I think I must summarise it:

Upcoming deadlines and presentations, Summer semester 2019

  • 31 May: Essay deadline, Theory and History (S1)
  • 10 June: Video presentation deadline, Qualitative Methods
  • 11 June: Presentation, Media Activism
  • 17 June: Presentation, Space and Place
  • 9 August: Essay deadline, Media Activism
  • 20 September: Essay deadline, Space and Place

Otherwise the big news is that my programme will change institution from FU to HMKW. It won’t affect me though, but it means I belong to the last generation that studies the programme at Freie Universität. I’m glad I made it before the programme moved, I really like FU!

What’s more? I took S out for a nice birthday lunch, watched the Eurovision final with A (as S boycotted it) and voted for Iceland, and booked an Airbnb apartment for Freiburger Filmforum in two weeks (we had planned to camp, but it seems it will be cold).

Yesterday I had a meeting with a “genius” at the Apple store on Kudamm since the keyboard of my 2016 Macbook Pro starts getting worse. The “up” button has been unreliable for a long time, but recently the space bar started being unreliable too, which was really annoying, and tonight the backspace seems to start freaking out as well. The question is whether Apple considers “being unreliable” as enough a reason to exchange the whole top part. I also complained about miscolourings on the screen and a popping sound. I’m scheduled to hand it in just before we go to Freiburg.

In TV, we started watching the Swedish Netflix series Quicksand (“Störst av allt”) and sort of got hooked immediately. So great to see Felix Sandman, my favourite in the Fooo, move on to acting and doing it so well!

Another full week coming up. This is apparently the most busy semester of the programme. I love it. But will have to focus on giving the finishing touches to the essay – I really look forward to handing it in and leaving it behind, as its subject clashes with the current courses, which I’m getting more and more excited about.

Study

Space and Place

Unit 2: The Body, Landscape & Process

  • Ingold, Tim (1993): The Temporality of the Landscape. In World Archaeology, Vol 25, No 2: Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society. (Oct. 1993), pp. 152-174.
  • Low, Setha M. (2009): Towards an Anthropological Theory of Space and Place. In Semiotica 175 – 1⁄4, pp. 21-37.

Unit 3: Scapes, Sites & The Berlin Brigade

  • Appadurai, Arjun. (1990): Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. In Theory Culture Society, Vol. 7, pp. 295-310.

Media Activism

Unit 2: Historical Developments

  • Kidd, D., & Rodriguez, C. (2009): Introduction. In C. Rodriguez, D. Kidd, & L. Stein (Eds.), Making our media: Global initiatives toward a democratic public sphere, Volume 1: Creating new communication spaces, pp. 1-22.
  • Melucci, A. (1996): The construction of collective action. In Challenging codes: Collective action in the information age, pp. 13-41 – skimmed!

Unit 6: Media Activism & Ethnographic Research

  • Video: The Guardian: Anonymous Comes to Town: The hackers who took on high school sexual assault in Ohio (via lecturer)

Qualitative Methods

  • Stoecker, R. (2013): Chapter 3: The Community Development Context of Research. In Research Methods for Community Change. A Project-Based Approach (2 ed.), pp. 47-72.
    • (Chapter 2: The Goose Approach to Research (p. 25-46), I read in Week 15, 2019.)

Immersive Technologies

  • 360 video: Black Women Rising | My People, Our Stories: Brazil

Other

Articles

  • The Economist:
    • Poland’s ruling party confronts the “LGBT dictatorship”
    • Lexington: No sex please, we’re millennials
    • Female MCs are changing Brazilian funk music
    • When Eurovision goes to Israel
  • The Guardian:
    • Sweden reopens rape case against Julian Assange
    • Assange now faces two extradition requests. What happens next?
  • The Smoking Gun:
    • Charges Dropped Against Florida Man Busted For “I Eat Ass” Car Sticker
    • Teen Breaks Up With Her Girlfriend, Then Immediately Posts Ex’s Nudes On Instagram
  • Vice: How Baby Scumbag’s Quest for Social Media Fame Ended in Disaster (2017)
  • The Verge: Google has been tracking nearly everything you buy online — see for yourself with this tool

Video

  • “Islam in Liberalism” featuring Professor Joseph Massad on 10/4/2018
  • Chelsea Manning’s Statement on Release from Jail and Second Grand Jury Subpeona
  • Various Re:publica talks, for example:
    • Eben Moglen: Why Freedom of Thought Requires Attention
    • Frank Rieger: Cyberwar, hybride Kriegführung, Desinformation

Filed Under: Study diary

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Recent Posts

  • Week 49: 2-8 December 2019
  • Week 48: 25 November – 1 December 2019
  • Week 47: 18-24 November 2019
  • The commodification of the Other
  • Week 46: 11-17 November 2019

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