The juxtaposition between reliance on Noah’s anthropological skills and the presumed lack of relevance this discipline has to broader society ultimately makes for good comedy. Reading the subtext in this relationship we see the value which Noah brings. Without Noah’s anthropological skills, Archer would never be Pirate King. I would even go so far as to suggest that Noah’s anthropological training, including his linguistic skills, are why he alone, amongst the rest of his research vessel crew, is alive, and still enslaved by the pirates.
Fieldwork Reflections
Lost in Quantification: The Microtechniques of Evaluation
“Look at the numbers!” Who hasn’t heard or even said that phrase during a debate? Does your company evaluate your work with performance indicators? We tend to take these indicators for granted, but things are not that simple.
Apprenticing Elsewhere
For the apprentice...who does not have the initial skills necessary to participate as a full member of a specific sporting practice, how are they to obtain the embodied knowledge of their interlocutors and understand what that knowledge says about their practice? This is where the concept of “apprenticeship elsewhere” comes into play.
The Weight of History: Doing Fieldwork as an Ethnic Chinese Researcher
I have been asked about my research in China as a researcher from Taiwan by my colleagues in the US. One of them commented: “It’s not common for someone from Taiwan to do research in China.” I have attributed this sudden recognition of my ethnocultural and legal identity as a Taiwanese and the subsequent framing of my actions as uncommon to the pandemic and its impact on the tensions in current international politics. identity with global geopolitics and how these geopolitical forces have real-life impact on my research and social life.