Informality: problem or solution?
Presentation at the World Bank PSD Forum 2006, Washington DC, April 4-6 Bureaucratic form and informality Most people attending this Forum live substantially inside what we may call…
Tag: Uncategorized
The Kolkata Intellectuals, transnationalism and Digital Diasporas
Examining Kolkata intellectuals and “digital diasporas”, this project increases the knowledge about and further the theoretical agenda in a rather neglected research area; migration, trans…
Upward Anthropology at AAA 2014
As most of you probably know, the American Anthropological Association annual meeting is being held in our home town of Washington DC December 3-7. As promised, we will…
Varieties of community currency
LETS and ‘open money’ The late twentieth century saw a revival of self-organized credit money, paradoxically in the leading centres of western capitalism. LETS, meaning ‘Let’s do it’,…
Chinese queries | 百度一下
屌丝一个: “Seriously speaking, is 100 wan enough to get out of China?” 飞飞: “You Baidu yixia first, see which country is a bit more reliable” Failed suggestion for…
Coca-Cola Life Launch: Inspired Creative
thenarcissisticanthropologist: Now that this product has hit the shelves in the U.S. I’m doing a “Throwback Monday” to honor product innovation and marketing that makes the universa…
打酱油 | Digital folklore & Tumblr as a research tool
What the notebook adds to this strategy of alliance with the fetishism of commodities, however, is that the very instrument of research is a fetish. In English we…
Standardardizing Species: Listening to, Representing, and Universalizing Bird Sounds in the 20th Century
I’m excited for Alexandra Hui’s upcoming talk November 4th at UC Davis and for the chance to act as discussant of her paper. She will be the second…
Im Gespräch mit Prof. Dr. Bernhard Streck
Foto: Christoph Lehmann Einige der aktuellen Studierenden am Institut für Ethnologie der Uni Leipzig kennen ihn noch persönlich aus seinen letzten Vorlesungen am Institut 2009/ 2010, späteren Jahrgäng…
Fear-bola and the Risk Society
Yes Ebola is real and dangerous, but hysteria and misinformation are socially irresponsible and dangerous… In 1986 sociologist Ulrich Beck published Risk Society. In it he described a…
[Book Review] Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the Private Sector by Sam Ladner
thenarcissisticanthropologist: Excited to read this. It’s he book I would have written if I had the commitment to write a whole book instead of a blog but looks…
Anthropology at Work
I would venture to bet that the vast majority of us – perhaps in the range of 99% – work for and in powerful institutions. This is obviously…
Lessons on Branding & Loyalty from the Popcorn Seller
How can a brand give something for free that is helpful to their consumers and also creates brand loyalty? Apple has recently shown that this is not easy…
AU PAC 2015 Recap
This past weekend we held our one year anniversary workshop at American University’s Public Anthropology Conference. It was a great session, with many participants (and it was our…
Barley Eaters or Potato Farmers
Are residents of Zumbagua parish barley-eaters or potato farmers? Does it matter? I wondered about this when I saw the difference between what men and women in Quilotoa, a…
“Fixing Culture”: The Case of Olive Garden
thenarcissisticanthropologist: A classic dilemma that so few corporations ever actually take the time to scope and solve. But there is an anthropologically-based solution possible here—starts wi…
Ferguson and the Founding of Sovereign Violence
The following is a post by one of our members, Mike Roller – a modified version of the talk he will present at the upcoming Public Anthropology Conference.…
Love, Haters and Hipsters: The Irony of Being A Millennial
I have officially decided that I’ve spent too much time commenting on a recent Facebook thread started in the last day by fellow bloggers Eve Kerrigan, Rachel Gall and Anna Akbari,…
Public Anthropology – This Weekend!
This is just a reminder that we will be at the Public Anthropology Conference at American University this weekend to stir up some trouble and crack open the…
30% off Materializing Poverty
Rollup, rollup! AltaMira have just sent me discount flyers for my book. If you were considering buying it but were holding off because of the price, now’s the…
Linguistic violence | 语言暴力
I was reading through 《平台魅力与舞台诱惑》 (Platform Glamour and Stage Lure: The Actors in China’s Internet Communication, edited by Yang Boxu and Xu Hong, 2011) when I came across…
Call for Managing Editor
The Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness is looking for a new editor for their journal Anthropology of Consciousness. Anthropology of Consciousness Open Access CALL FOR MANAGING EDITOR…
Upward Allegory: Yertle the Turtle
“That plain little turtle below in the stack, That plain little turtle whose name was just Mack That plain little turtle did a plain little thing He burped…
An Anthropologist on Board
In a recent article in the Financial Times, the philosopher, Alain de Botton makes the case, in a rather fun and light-hearted way, that it is now time for corporate…