In Robert Pirsig’s book, Lila (1991), the main character – a thinly veiled author alter ego named Phædrus – tries to write a book about the influence of native American values on broad American culture. Inspired by an anthropologist colleague at the university in Montana where he used to teach, Phædrus seeks to frame the [...]
Posts under ‘Academia’
Thesis defense
Since coming back from my holidays, I have been in something of a limbo state while waiting to find out the date for my thesis defense. I couldn’t quite tell if I should be panicky with last-minute preparations or summerly relaxed with plenty of time to spare.
Well, now I know. I got the letter this [...]
Thesis done!
My thesis, based on my anthropological fieldwork in the Ubuntu community, is finally done, and I turned it in yesterday.
Since I began writing my thesis, I’ve had this as my background screen on my computer:
‘Going Native‘ is losing your reflexive anthropological distance by becoming to closely involved with the field. It is taking on some [...]
Principles of Economics, translated
It seems that nobody is able to take the piss on economists quite as well as the economists themselves.
For a more sober explanation of economics, you might want to read this instead.
Spending a morning as an anthropologist
This morning I sat in on a seminar about research and anthropology intended to get Danish high school students interested in anthropology. My mother, who is high school teacher, brought her students from Aarhus to Copenhagen on a couple of days of excursion, and in-between seeing the parliament, the foreign ministry and bunches of other [...]
Thesis writing
I met with thesis advisor (or supervisor – I’m not really sure about the proper English terminology here. I think advisor sounds more precise) yesterday to discuss the outline of my thesis.
As I had figured, he agreed that it was a good idea to design each chapter as independent essays with their own argument and [...]
Changing teaching
What now feels like a long time ago, I wrote on anti-teaching and my curiosity towards the book Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. Well, as chance would have it, I got the book for Christmas, and now I have had my curiosity sated. Well, actually more like whetted.
Written in [...]
Added old writings
I just went through some of my old stuff, and came across my old articles for the University of Copenhagen Institute of Anthropology magazine known as “Den Vilde Tanke” – which is the Danish translation of the French La Pensée Sauvage.
I helped with the layout, editing and writing for most of my first 3 years [...]
Making the most of your education
Students always complain about their teachers. Teachers often complain about their students. But you know things are turning worse when students are complaining about their fellow students. But that is just what this American graduate student is doing in this letter:
Consumerism as ideology manifests itself in the academy, an unfortunate development that I hear professors [...]
Anti-teaching and open teaching
There are some very interesting posts about teaching over at the Savage Minds anthropology group blog. Michael Wesch is introducing his concept of “anti-teaching” and trying to engage his students in new ways to make basic anthropological theory more accessible. It sounds extremely intriguing.
Furthermore, anthropologist Christopher Kelty has introduced the Connexions project which he has [...]
I'm an anthropologist working as an 
