I found it helpful when Eriksen drew the line in the sand about the fundamental questions that anthropology concerns itself with. Here's his Big Three: 1) What is that makes people do whatever they do? 2) How are societies or cultures integrated? 3)To what extent does thought vary from society to society, and how much is similar across cultures?
Practices of Anthropology
“We will give to you so that you can give to us”: A Tale of Two Manuscripts
I debated for quite a long while as to what kind of second project I thought would be the most useful, given the circumstances. ... My main concern, however, remains: what will be the most accessible and useful for Shaligram practitioners themselves?
Paying back or paying forward: What does it mean to give?
I was lucky to have Mexican friends to put me up, ferry me around, shower me with food and attention, without asking for a thing in return. It wasn’t long, however, before their hospitality began to overwhelm me. I felt compelled to return the generosity in whatever meagre way I could – and hamstrung by my inability to do so.
Ep #20 Wearing the black armband: Mick Dodson talks ongoing colonisation in Australia
“We don’t look back enough to go forward, I don’t think. We need to look in the rear view mirror everyday”.
Professor Mick Dodson AM, a Yawuru Aboriginal man, Australian barrister, academic and recently retired Director of the National Centre of Indigenous Studies at ANU, talks to our own Julia Brown about some of the ongoing struggles for Indigenous Australians.
Land, Labour & Society in Aceh: Chandra Jayawardena’s unpublished fieldnotes
This post is a little outside our usual mandate, but we are intrigued by the idea that Professor Robinson proposes: an interactive online project she is working on to share and find publication avenues for the works of the late anthropologist Chandra Jayawardena. What would it mean to use field notes that have undergone no analysis? What is it like using the raw data of someone who can no longer have a say on how it is assessed?
Another Life
As anthropologist Kirin Narayan put to readers of her book Alive in the Writing, the creative process of ethnographic writing can grow from ‘the impulse to find company amid the often isolating and difficult aspects of writing’. In ethnographic writing, we need to somehow re-galvanise our fieldwork experiences that are now in the past.
Saying No to the CIA… and Other Anth Fantasies
It doesn’t go without saying, so I’ll say it: I’ve never worked for the CIA, or done any intelligence or security work of any kind, nor would I. But all through my years living abroad, in Indonesia and Australia, I harbored a secret fantasy, that maybe, one day, I would be tapped.
Intimacy and Violence
At what point does a moment of mutual intimacy become intrusive, or even violent?
As ethnographers, we strive to learn the dance of our participants; we follow their lead as they generously guide us through their worlds. That dancing can be enthralling and as intense as it is intimate, and it can also invite unintentional violence.
What Do We Owe the Informants Whose Data we Don’t Use?
Ana provided me with generous amounts of knowledge, time, and care. She knew I was doing a doctorate, and the understanding between us was clear: her knowledge, and her story, would be at its core. Now, that isn’t going to happen. I can use her information for articles, but it doesn’t feel the same.
The Facebook Data Scandal and Why Anthropology Should get More Comfortable with Journalism
There’s anthropological spirit in investigative journalism that anthropologists could better acknowledge. Regardless of whether it has a anthropology qualification attached or it is embedded in complex cultural theory, it is something that sparks thinking about the ‘other’; the ‘strange’.
The Familiar Strange 