Looking back, looking forward
Pushmi-Pullyu, by Kerim Friedman 2021 The blog may be shutting down, but I’m not! I started blogging in 2001 and my personal blog, Keywords, is still going strong.…
Author: Kerim
Sunset
Photo by Jason Blackeye via Unsplash Dear readers, We are sorry to say that after eighteen years, we are going to be shutting down this blog at the…
Anthro Boycott 2.0
Supporters of academic boycott during the annual business meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Denver, Colorado, November 21, 2015. Photo by Alex Shams. Responding to the petition…
In 2023, Question Everything
Here’s a New Year’s Resolution for everyone for 2023: Question everything about how we teach, do research, and select students or job applicants. – Question grades – Question…
What makes a job ad “terrible”?
On September 18, 2021, Dada Docot launched what she called “Search for 2021 Worst Anthro Job Ads.” Taking place on Twitter, this “contest” brought public attention to conversations…
Follow us on Mastodon
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter, there has been an exodus of “Twitter executives on the front lines of protecting safety, security, speech, and accessibility. Some were fired, others…
Tips for Better Online Teaching
As I write this, colleges in Taiwan are switching to online learning for the first time since the pandemic started. This is because, for most of the past…
Roam If You Want To
You already know how to use Roam Research, the new note taking app taking the internet by storm. You don’t need to follow the #roamcult hashtag on Twitter,…
COVID-19 Potpourri
The WHO declared that COVID-19 is now officially a “pandemic.” It should be: "COVID-19 declared a pandemic by WHOM." — John Gemberling (@Gemberlicking) March 11, 2020 Whi…
Inventing the Way of Tea in Taiwan
Photo by David Boté Estrada One never knows how to read the NY Times when it comes to their reporting on the lifestyles of the one-percenters, but not…
We suck at (academic) politics
Ninety percent of the time if you were to read a blog post about academics and politics it would be a rant about “identity politics.” This isn’t going…
Roll Your Own QDA (Working With Text 5)
Many social scientists purchase expensive qualitative data analysis software to code their field notes and interview data, but I want to show how you can accomplish the same…
Hobbes the Science Fiction Writer (Part II)
In Part I, I explored how Hobbes’s myth was a kind of science fiction story designed convince his readers to end the English Civil War by accepting peace…
Hobbes the Science Fiction Writer (Part I)
It is common to meet people who believe that much of the world is beset by “tribalism” and that the only thing holding back the chaos of a…
Dendrites, Interns, Contributors, & Guest Contributors
Just a short announcement to point out that a couple of names have disappeared from our sidebar as we move to make our list of authors better reflect…
Lazy PowerPoint (Working With Text 4)
We all know we should bike to work, but sometimes the weather is bad, or we are late, or just feeling lazy, and so we take the car.…
Text-laundering (Working With Text 3)
Ever copy and paste something that should be a solid paragraph of text, which should look like this: Consuetudium lectorum Mirum est notare. Eodem modo typi qui nunc…
RegEx 101 (Working With Text 2)
Let’s say that there was a revolution in your field site and the “Feline Republic” is now the “Canine Republic.” This is an easy problem to solve. You…
Free Your Mind, the Text Will Follow (Working With Text 1)
While I’ve written a fair amount of software reviews and how to guides in the past, this year I thought I’d do something different. This is the first…
Start an Anthropology Career in 2018
Lets put aside for the moment all the usual warnings about pursuing an academic career. Lets say that you are old enough to take responsibility for your own…
The Politics of Explaining Taiwan
Mail to Taiwan often gets sent to Thailand Imagine if, when writing a paper on Donald Trump, you had to start your paper by saying the following:1 The…
Savage Minds is dead! Long live anthro{dendum}!
This will be the last post on the domain savageminds.org, but the site will live on. It will live on both at this address (savageminds.org) where there will…
Savage Minds is dead! Long live anthro{dendum}!
This will be the last post on the domain savageminds.org, but the site will live on. It will live on both at this address (savageminds.org) where there will…
The Cyborg Anthropologist (Tools We Use)
For those who don’t know, I live, work, teach, and do research in a predominantly Chinese speaking environment. Although you are probably aware that learning Chinese is hard,…