Virtual Waste: Flowing from a data center near you
Thinking with virtual data demonstrates that reduction of material waste alone does not mean a reduction of an overall environmental footprint on this planet.
Tag: material culture
What do Cultural Anthropologists do? "Decode" Human Behaviour
According to a recent article (August 3, 2017) in the Financial Post, Martin Birt discusses the work of Johanna Faigelman, CEO and founding partner of Human Branding. In answer…
Guest Post: An Encounter with Basket Traditions in Zanzibar City
I am very happy to here share a guest post by Kurt Dewhurst and Marsha MacDowell of the Michigan State University Museum, East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Traditions of handmade, woven…
Some Baskets at Work in Zanzibar
Marsha MacDowell and Kurt Dewhurst kindly shared these photographs of work baskets in Zanzibar. The images were taken while they were visiting Tanzania as part of a large…
A Japanese Packbasket
Here I present another of the Asian packbaskets that I examined in the ethnology collections of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. (See…
An Ifugao Packbasket from Northern Luzon, Philippines
In connection with ongoing research on work baskets in the Southwestern provinces of China, I spent some time during the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology looking comparatively at…
A Peak at Two “Miao Albums” with a Group of SIMA Colleagues
Working with the graduate students participating in the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology is a pleasure. The students who are attending in order to gain skills for their…
Remembering & Memories: there’s an app for that…
As we’ve posted about before, the adoption of new media and technology in our lives has an impact on our social lives in many interesting ways. In many…
The Packaging of Anthropological Knowledge and Its Merits According to Market Research Experts
In a Harvard Business Review article To Get More Out of Social Media, Think Like an Anthropologist authors Susan Fournier, John Quelch, and Bob Rietveld (August 16, 2016) advocate…
TAL + SM: The Stories Bones Tell
This Anthro Life – Savage Minds Crossover Series, part 4 by Adam Gamwell and Ryan Collins This Anthro Life has teamed up with Savage Minds to bring you…
The Basketry of Blaise Cayol: A Mathers Museum Connection to Southern France on the Occasion of the Indiana University Visit to Marseille
Indiana University has connections and partnerships all around the world. This week, special attention is being directed to Spain and France, where IU President Michael M. McRobbie is…
Sonic Breakdown, Extinction and Memory
by Lina Dib Originally published in continent 6(1) CC BY 2.0 DOWNLOAD PDF (https://soundcloud.com/continent/lina-dib-sonic-breakdown-extinction-and-memory) This soundtrack features sounds of environme…
Translation and Materiality: The Travels of European Porcelain (2017 Bauman Lecture)
News of the upcoming Richard Bauman Lecture in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University is now circulating on campus. Here are the details about this year’s talk…
Understanding hipsters – scholarly and otherwise
Are “hipsters” on their way out, or have they become so normalized in our popular culture that we don’t really notice them anymore? (And, if the latter, is…
Understanding hipsters – scholarly and otherwise
Are “hipsters” on their way out, or have they become so normalized in our popular culture that we don’t really notice them anymore? (And, if the latter, is…
Information Salvage
These are the lessons we have learned in efforts to salvage neglected information in the form of narrative fragments salvaged from the waste stream. Our working laboratory is…
Illogical Objects and What they Tell Us #MeadCompetition
Most objects in our households have a purpose. They clothe, seat, feed or transport us. Some object do extra duty; they communicate something about us that we want…
CFP: Museum Anthropology Futures
On behalf of the Council for Museum Anthropology, I am happy to pass along the call for proposals for the Museum Anthropology Futures conference in Montreal this May.…
What’s Your Beef
How eating brisket shapes the future in the present. A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his…
Naming and place: What Do You Call the Corner Store?
Depanneur in Quebec This is a fun little piece from Atlas Obscura that teachers might want to bring into a discussion of language: What Do You Call the Corner…
Naming and place: What Do You Call the Corner Store?
Depanneur in Quebec This is a fun little piece from Atlas Obscura that teachers might want to bring into a discussion of language: What Do You Call the Corner…
An Interview with Jessica Richardson Smith, Museum Anthropologist and Research Services Librarian at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Jessica Richardson Smith is the Research Services Librarian at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. She pursued three majors—Anthropology, Latin and Greek, and Geology for her Indiana University…
Hallowe’en & Racism
LSPIRG’s (Wilfred Laurier University) I am Not a Costume campaign Boo! Hallowe’en is a rich holiday for anthropologists to dig into for how it brings together many different…
Hallowe’en & Racism
LSPIRG’s (Wilfred Laurier University) I am Not a Costume campaign Boo! Hallowe’en is a rich holiday for anthropologists to dig into for how it brings together many different…