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, …
Read MoreAnthropology and the Muhammed cartoons
Last night, I went to attend a debate at the Department of Anthropology on the much-discussed Mohammed-cartoons. It focused on the anthropological perspective of the reactions and counter-reactions to the drawings and how anthropological theories can help win broader understanding in the current situation. Now …
Read MoreThe Ideal University?
Over at the Apophenia Blog the local resident, Danah, is pondering how she would spend a billion dollars to design a university. If you had the money and the opportunity, how would you design your dream institution of higher education? I think this is a …
Read MoreThe beginning of a new semester..
So, the new semester has started, and my courses are well underway. I’m taking my final anthropology course – Field Method – the purpose of which will be to prepare me (and help me prepare) for my exciting fieldwork next year. The specifics of this …
Read MoreDavid Graeber, ph.d
One of the few radically politically active anthropologists today is David Graeber, currently of Yale University. He has written some brilliant articles on the new generation of “anti-globalization” radicals, among who he has been doing some informal fieldwork of late. Among his articles I can …
Read MoreEssays, he says
I’ve just finished my third of four essays. Leaving me with just one. Of course, since I haven’t actually turned any of the first three in yet (they’re not due until the 13th of May), there’s still ample room and chance for improvement. Therefore, I’ve …
Read MorePrickly Paradigm
Spearheaded by famed anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, Prickly Paradigm Press puts out some quite interesting pamphlets, mostly containing interviews, tidbits of various philosophical ideas and other ideas too strange to get published elsewhere.
Read MoreLearning to learn
I’ve just attended a guest lecture with Gayatri Spivak, an Indian scholar of some repute. It was very much in the spirit of “Lettre Internationale”: Cosmopolitical intellectualism, working for the common good in ways that ordinary people cannot comprehend. A true and dedicated intellectual, she …
Read MorePhenomenology…
We were talking phenomenology in the “Perception, Cognition and Knowledge” course yesterday when this rather delicious quote surfaced: I live in the facial expressions of the other, as I feel him living in mine. – Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, 1964
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