It’s been a long way underway, first through fieldwork, writing, submitting, defending, editing, and polishing. But now, finally. My anthropological thesis on the social dynamics of the Ubuntu community is available for everybody to read. You can download the abstract, or the full 2.9 MB PDF file. I’ve released it under a Creative Commons license [...]
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 [...]
I began with physical anthropology. I was taught how to measure the size of the brain of a human being who had been dead for a long time, who was all dried out. I bored a hole in his skull, and I filled it with grains of polished rice. Then I emptied the rice into [...]
This Friday I went to the old Department of Anthropology’s annual Career day. This is where old anthropology graduates return to their alma mater to tell soon-to-graduate students about life outside the university. In the so-called “real world”. The study advisors arranging the event had set the minimum attendance to ten, and required all participants [...]
I just saw today that Kurt Vonnegut, writer and misunderstood anthropologist has passed away, aged 84. So it goes. (as a lot of obituaries no doubt will be saying referring to Vonnegut’s own writings) I’ve enjoyed all that I’ve read from Vonnegut’s pen, both sharply sarcastic and quietly wise. If you haven’t done so, I [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
My thesis advisor is really a quite clever guy. I had a meeting with him this afternoon to discuss the first draft of my fieldwork report that I gave him a couple of days ago, and he really pulled it apart: “Where’s the anthropological distance? Where’s the methodological reflections?” he demanded, and I must have [...]
Now that I’ve officially finished my fieldwork, and with all the talk going on about Open Access Anthropology, I thought I’d try my own little Open Access experiment. I’ve decided to publish the question guide I’ve used for my fieldwork under the GPL. I’ve even indented and commented them in proper code fashion (or, at [...]
Native speakers can rarely explain the grammatical rules of their own language. In the same way, those who are most ‘fluent’ in the rituals, customs and traditions of a particular culture generally lack the detachment necessary to explain the ‘grammar’ of these practices in an intelligible manner. This is why we have anthropologists. – Kate [...]