Paper: Comparison in anthropology – what to compare?
Budka, P. (2024). Comparison in anthropology – what to compare?. Paper at InfraNorth Workshop “Ethnography Beyond the Case Study: Possibilities and Limitations of Comparison”, Stock…
Tag: Comparison
Lisa Rofel and Sylvia Yanagisako on Fabricating Transnational Capitalism
Interview by Janet Connor https://www.dukeupress.edu/fabricating-transnational-capitalism Janet Conner: Why is fashion so good for thinking about capitalism? Lisa Rofel and Sylvia Yanagi…
Comparing Comparisons: From the “Historikerstreit” to the Mbembe Affair
In the late 1980s, mostly German intellectuals discussed the question of the “uniqueness” or “comparability” of the Holocaust. In the Cause Mbembe, the fronts, the participants and the…
Like: Memetic Analogies in Social Media
Memes circulating on the net articulate simple comparisons with political intent, for example as an analogy between the USA today and “Weimar” back then, or between German and…
Arctic Youth well-being project participating in circumpolar comparison
The team of the joint Finnish-Russian project studying well-being among youth in Arctic Ria Adams presenting her work within WOLLIE on opportunities and threats for young people’s well-being,…
The value of comparison (in anthropology)
Peter van der Veer (2013: 11) on the “comparative advantage of anthropology”: 1) anthropology offers a critique of the universalization of Western models 2) holistic approach to social…
From Facebook to ‘fakebook’ – who controls the information on social media?
A young Chinese factory worker reading on his smartphone. Mark Zuckerberg finally said that Facebook plans to have a more effective control of misinformation, which is a sharp reversal…
The launch of Why We Post
Released today: ‘How the World Changed Social Media’ After years of work and planning, we have today launched Why We Post, which represents the results of our project.…
What is the difference between a generalisation and a stereotype?
All anthropologists would agree that stereotypes cause harm and should be avoided. Yet anthropology mainly consists of generalisations about groups of people: the Nuer do this, the Trobriand…
Why popular anthropology?
The core mission of anthropology is the understanding of human behaviour in a world full of cultural and historical diversity. The anthropological commitment to this immense plurality…
Negotiating comparison in ethnographic fieldwork
Anthropology, a discipline dedicated to understanding the full range of human experience from as many perspectives as possible, has always been comparative. This comparative aspect was one of…
Sharing anthropological discoveries on social media: ‘marketing’ or ‘interactive learning’?
Social media and engaging anthropology? (Photo: Pabak Sarkar CC BY 2.0) Over the last year, people have often asked us questions like “Surely you will market your project using social…
Using storytelling to build online courses
The project team filming a video for our online course Recently we have been filming a new online course on the anthropology of social media that will be available…
Learning to write English
Image courtesy of Sharon & Nikki McCutcheon (Creative Commons) Of our team of nine anthropologists only three are native speakers of English, two from England one from the…
It’s not just about Chinese migrant workers
Chinese female migrant workers working in a local reflective vest workshop. Photo by Xinyuan Wang A question always strikes me as I write up ethnography and prepare for…
How did we choose our field sites?
Our project field site locations A question we are often asked is how we selected our field sites for the project. Why these nine sites? Why are there…
What’s our conclusion? Introducing ‘scalable sociality’
Scalable Sociality Right now we are finishing the last of our eleven volumes from this project, a book which will be called How the World Changed Social Media.…
A methodological case of comparative anthropology
Image Courtesy Quinn Dombrowski (Creative Commons) I hear from colleagues in our department that completing a PhD can often be a solitary experience. Anthropologists tend to accept the fact that socia…
Social media as hyper-visibility
Image courtesy of Kris A, Creative Commons After an intensive few months of hiding away finishing our books (and neglecting this blog), we have come back together…
Workshop note on digital media and socio-political change
By Victor Lasa On 20 February 2015, Dr John Postill convened a workshop with fellow RMIT scholars and research students around the topic of “Digital media and socio-political…
Ethnological Method
Applying the comparative method in historical linguistics is relatively straightforward and academics habitually apply it to any language they come across at some point or other. But the…
How to buy glasses online (Part 3): Warby Parker
This is the third part of a multipart review series, How To Buy Glasses Online. Part 3 focuses on Warby Parker (warbyparker.com). If you haven’t read Parts 1…