Following on the heels of Bill Davis’ letter to the White House that has been hashed out here and elsewhere it became apparent that many of us are concerned about the future of Open Access princ...
The piece for discussion this week (actually, it should have been last week, but I got caught behind a couple of different eight balls) is Vincente Diaz’s “Voyaging for Anti-Colonial Recov...
Peter Schmidt over at the Chronicle of Higher Ed has a new article that takes a long look at Charles Murray’s new book “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Murray is one...
It’s 8 am, and already bright. I’m out for an early morning walk because it’s a good way to see what ‘s going on around this community–to see what people are up to, and...
Shortly after Bill Davis’s letter to the White House provoked debate here at Savage Minds and other anthropology blogs I joined a conversation in the comments section of one post about what acti...
The NY Times has an article about how corporate executives and government officials leave their laptops behind when they go to China or Russia, for fear that corporate or government secrets might be c...
Ok, since everyone on here seems to be writing about Jared Diamond, including Jason, I am going to go ahead and jump on the bandwagon too. I can’t resist. What can I say? I’m a compl...
Jeremy Lin is the latest basketball sensation. Sports usually isn’t my beat, but I trust Nate Silver to do the statistics and he says Jeremy Lin’s recent success is no fluke. What I find i...
In a recent post, Kerim does excellent work tracing the Savage Minds engagement with Jared Diamond, which dates to the establishment of this blog as a scrappy band of Davids taking aim at Goliath. The...
Thanks to everyone to read and contributed to last week’s reinauguration of our ‘reading circle’ feature. This week I’d like to showcase some more great open access work by ask...
I’m currently on a committee which has been tasked with developing a set of ethical guidelines for visual ethnography in Taiwan. While I agreed to take part in this process because ‘image...
Recent comments on Hau and the opening of ethnographic theory remind me of what I always think of when I hear about the Bongobongo: The time is gone when anthropologists could find solace in the claim...
It occurs to me that academia is being ‘disrupted’ (as the digerati like to say) in the same way that the music industry once was. As open access, the Internet, and DIY publishing opportun...
Ok, a little less politics on this blog and a little more anthropology. Hopefully some of you have looked at the introduction to HAU and want to start talking about it. The title of the piece is ̶...
Savage Minds welcomes guest blogger Jason Antrosio. [I realize the irony of prominently citing American Anthropologist during the Open Access debates--I do end with a call to support Rex's proposal to...
With all the lively debate here at the blog, maybe you’ve missed the fun we’ve been having on the @savageminds twitter feed and Facebook page. There you’ll find fresh daily links to...
I was very impressed to read this blog post by Jeremy Trombley: As an up and coming academic, I’m willing to put my career on the line and promise to only publish in open access journals. Puttin...
One of the problems plaguing anthropology today is its state of perpetual indecision. This is probably not a new problem, but it does have serious consequences for how we write and publish. What is th...
There’s been a ton of discussion in blogs, twitter, and hallways about the AAA’s shameful opposition to the free dissemination of knowledge. It’s depressing, but ultimately I think t...
ABSTRACT Understanding current neoliberalism in Brazil requires an analysis of the piracy that has been going on there since at least the 1970s. Early phases of neoliberalism shrank the state, liber...
ABSTRACTThe recent completion of a hydropower dam near Jimma, Ethiopia coincided with rolling blackouts throughout the country and accusations of corruption and mismanagement being directed toward the...
ABSTRACT In the middle of both recessionary financial constraints and new developments in what are often called “neoliberal” global economics, a number of high-profile North American universitie...
ABSTRACT In this article I discuss the unintended consequences of humanitarian and development assistance provided to “victims of human rights abuses” in Haiti in the years following the restora...
ABSTRACT The classical immunological paradigm is predicated on the body's ability to recognize and eliminate “nonself.” However, the “self–nonself” model has yet to facilitate any resoluti...
ABSTRACT For anthropologists, the term neoliberal often becomes a shorthand for indicating all that is wrong with the present. But such usage of the term can foreclose our ability to imagine differe...
We’ve been here before. We’ve tried to explain why it is important. We’ve written a lot about it. But nothing seems to have changed. What can we do to make anthropologists care about...
I just read about this news this morning (thanks to the wonders of email). The American Anthropological Association recently published its comments to the Request for Information (RFI) from the Offi...
Who can save us…from ourselves? Who can put an end to the current fiasco that is academic publishing? Since we are all so entrenched in this system, where can we look for a way out? In a p...
A while ago Kerim wrote a post on the difference between ‘mining’ and ‘harvesting’ strategies of publication. It touched off a lot of interesting discussion, but lacked a concr...
This past Thursday I spent the morning floating in a sensory deprivation tank. I saw it on sale through Groupon and I thought, why not? An interesting experience, it was very relaxing and left me with...
A few years ago my wife Veronica (who is also a cultural anthropology graduate student) was doing her M.A. fieldwork in Yucatan, Mexico. I was there with her. We were staying in a decent sized pue...
Those of you following Savage Minds since the beginning will remember when this blog was the object of scorn and ridicule across the blogsphere as a result of our temerity in attacking Jared Diamond&#...
Yesterday important swaths of the Internet were blacked out to protest SOPA, PIPA, and the RWA. We would have blacked out our site as well but… uh… we sort of didn’t get around to it...
Over at his blog, Jason Jackson wonder whether that AAA supports HR 3699 or not. It’s a good question, but I think there is an even better one to ask: can the AAA support (or oppose) HR 3699? I...
Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer, Henri Leclerc: At these parties, people were not necessarily dressed, and I defy you to tell the difference between a naked prostitute and any other naked woman.
A bit ago Kerim talked about ‘reading fast’ and ‘reading slow’ (something I’ve called ‘pace layering‘ in the past). It was a post a lot of people found useful...
Nicholas Negroponte famously insisted that the dotcom boomers, “Move bits, not atoms.” Ignorant of the atom heavy human bodies, neuron dense brains, and physical hardware needed to make an...
Apologies for two posts in one night, but there’s a lot of news on the open access front. First, the Quantum Pontiff asks whether Elsevier Could shut down arixiv.org: They haven’t yet, but t...
The sound: It was late afternoon. I was in the middle of conducting an interview, recording the conversation with a small digital voice recorder. Rain falling outside, in droves. I could hear wa...
Just writing to send two quick thanks out to the anthropological blogosphere. First, on behalf of myself and all the other Minds here at SM I wanted to say thanks to all our readers for voting us thei...
A while back Rex wrote a comment on one of his posts that got me thinking. About academia. About publishing. And about the current system that many of us are a part of. Speaking about what he...
In prepping for my new gender studies course this spring I’m rereading Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s Mother Nature for the first time in about ten years. Well, aside from looking at the pictures and glanci...
Many of you have probably used a road today, maybe even a highway. You didn’t think too much about it, the same way you didn’t worry about the electricity supply to your house, or the pota...
A favorite topic on the blogosphere is whether or not Seediq Bale is an historically accurate take on the Wushe Incident: Why is Mona Rudao at events in the early 1900s he didn’t attend (人止關 i...
In academia the month of December is a crescendo of responsibilities, but our Twitter feed of links to anthroblogs, world news, and internet flotsam sailed on. This handy monthly report is a sample of...
Bumper sticker spotted today on the ODU campus, outside my building. Also, what would be a good way of meeting this person without being all stalker-y? Today’s adventure: headed to the Perry Lib...
Commentary on the film Seediq Bale tends to relate it to Taiwan identity. Leaping the fifty years from the Wushe Incident (1930) to Taiwan nationalism (1980s) might seem like a non sequitur or anachr...
Seediq Bale may be of particular interest to anthropologists because it’s about a Taiwan indigenous uprising against the Japanese in 1930. It’s also of interest to translators. As an Chinese-Engli...
It was a good year for the vibrancy of the Savage Minds community. There were plenty of interesting posts to comment on and issues to debate. Here in our annual year-in-review I’ll point you tow...
In the December 9, 2011, issue of the journal Science there’s amazing story about new heights of audacity in the commodification of scholarship titled, “Saudi Universities Offer Cash in Ex...
Seediq Bale is the biggest Taiwan film ever and the story of an indigenous resistance (against the Japanese in central Taiwan in 1930). As such, it reminds one of Avatar. Having spent many childhood n...
Since Kerim is doing professionalization-related posts, here are some quick tips for the awkward ritual of asking someone to be on your dissertation committee: Make sure they will say yes: Ask your ad...
Here at Savage Minds headquarters we regularly get emails from people seeking help finding an appropriate graduate program in Anthropology. Looking through our archives, I realize that while I’v...
One of the underlying questions that I am looking at in my research at is how conflicts in tourism development can be understood by using “value” as a theoretical diving board. Yes, I me...
Over the course of a single day I engage in a number of different activities for which the word “reading” doesn’t seem to do justice: I scan my social networks, I check my email, I r...
What better way to spend your winter break than to read all those books you didn’t have time to read because you were busy reading other books? I thought I’d mention a few things that are...
I had the pleasure of hanging out with Dutch anthropologist Dorien Zandbergen (PhD, Anthropology, Leiden University) in Sweden in October at an ESF Research Conference and learning about her fascina...
Music Playlists to Soothe Your Mind...
In Taiwan’s first indigenous film, Finding Sayun, there are two casting assistant/cameraman characters from Beijing, as well as a director from Beijing. The director from Beijing never appears...
In an article on the recent Orchid Island film Waiting for the Flying Fish, which is about but not by Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, Prof. Anita Wen-hsin Chang called for funding for local films b...