As the summer winds down...GET OFF MY LAWN!!

At the beginning of the summer, Krystal D'Costa wrote an intriguing piece about The American Obsession with Lawns.

Don't think you're interested in green, gardening? This post has it all with a history of lawn landscaping and culture, considerations of class, design and aesthetic, exclusion and social-indicators of belonging. One might also easily read racial bias into lawn culture and cultural critique. D'Costa's post is somewhat reminiscent of Rotenberg's Landscape and Power in Vienna (1995) where he demonstrates how groups and classes work to align with political movements and inform cultural meanings in everyday (and larger, for example municipal, national, etc.) life.

Below is a snippet of her post:

We are at a moment when the American Dream, inasmuch as it still exists, is changing. The idea of homeownership is untenable or undesirable for many. While green spaces are important, a large area of green grass seems to be a lower priority for many. With a growing movement that embraces a more natural lifestyle, there is a trend toward the return of naturalized lawns that welcome flowering weeds, and subsequently support a more diverse entomological ecosystem.

Old habits die hard, however. And it is hard to also abandon this idea of a manifestation of material success, especially as it is so readily recognized as such. As of 2005, lawns covered an estimated 63,000 square miles of America. That's about the size of Texas. It's the most grown crop in the United States--and it's not one that anyone can eat; it's primary purpose is to make us look and feel good about ourselves.

D'Costa ends with the following statement: Lawns are American. But they're also an anomaly. And they may no longer fit the realities of the world we live in. 

The lawn factor may also translate for some living up here in Canada.

Read more of D'Costa's analysis and about this history of lawn and lawn culture by clicking on the quick links below.

Quick Links:

• Anthropology in Practice: Exploring the human condition Krystal D'Costa at Scientific American 
• Anthropology Blogs for the Affluent Tech-Thusiast? AnthoEverywhere! (July 27 2017)
• The American Obsession with Lawns by Krystal D'Costa at Scientific American (May 3 2017)
• Landscape and Power in Vienna, Robert Rotenberg (1995)

Jediism as Religion: Anthropology for a Changing World

Last Thursday, anthroeverywhere! wrote about Gillian Parrish's post on Jedi-training in the classroom, which they use as a means to teach implicit skills such as empathy to students.

Today, we delve back into the connection between Jediism and Anthropology (because why not...) by pointing out a guest blog post on The Geek Anthropologist entitled When Science Fiction meets Religion: The Case of Jediism.

In their post, Maria (Polyhymnia) Menegaki outlines a paper they presented at the AlterNatives: Anthropological Knowledge for Changing World program organized by the University of Ljubljana in 2015.

In this paper, Menegaki explores the growing global movement of the Church of Jediism and their quest to become a recognized religion. In this post, Menegaki questions the process in which religions are defined and likens this movement to those of other New Age movements that came of age in the 20th Century. Menegaki goes on to explore many topics that were likely further fleshed out in their paper, which include: the role of play, the perception of cohesion among followers, the difference between fandom vs. religious observance, and their failure to be recognized beyond an online community (as decided by the UK's Charity Commission in 2016).

Menegaki ends this post stating that the exploration of Jediism can serve anthropologists as a topic of new forms of religiosity and/or as a form of social critique (the latter of which was not discussed in this post).

These are interesting suggestions indeed. To read Menegaki's post follow the quick link to The Geek Anthropologist below.

Quick Links:

• AlterNatives: Anthropological Knowledge for Changing World University of Ljubljana (2015)
• The Connection between Anthropology and Jedi Training by AnthroEverywhere! (August 10 2017)
• Jedi is not a religion, Charity Commission rules BBC (December 19, 2016)
• Jedi Training: Developing Habits of Perception in Our Disciplines by Gillian Parrish (August 7, 2017)
• The Geek Anthropologist website
• When Science Fiction meets Religion: The Case of Jediism by Maria (Polyhymnia) Menegaki (May 4, 2017)

The Connection between Anthropology and Jedi Training

Gillian Parrish wrote a post for Magna's Faculty Focus magazine entitled Jedi Training: Developing Habits of Perception in Our Disciplines.

In this piece, Parrish describes how longstanding practitioners develop implicit skills that can be the source of some of the deepest learning for our students. Parrish argues that faculty must try and develop empathy in their students so that their knowledge learned can blossom into expertise and wisdom.

To do this, Parrish advocates that faculty 1) identify the habitual, underlying modes of sensing in our disciplines, and 2) design assignments for practicing these modes in whole-person ways that engage our students not only intellectually, but in their embodied, emotional everyday lives.

Parrish mentions activities that she uses to achieve these goals including developing students' listening and orientation skills by having them slip into an "ethnographic mode" for an activity (writing what they describe as 'the heart of the conversation complete with pauses and description). Parrish goes on to describe other approaches that would feel quite at home in an anthropologist's classroom; for example, when Parrish advocates that students need to acknowledge how they see the world around them, engage in self reflection, and notice (their) implicit habits of perceiving everyday life as a practitioner in your field.

So why the connection to Jedi Training? Parrish states:

Jedi-training exercises require the kind of close attention and new ways of thinking that can lead to love for our subject matter. This kind of whole-person learning guards against abstraction, keeps us in relationship with the wider world, makes us better caretakers of people and planet. For after all, as observed by my four-year-old niece: “We are all connected. In a web. Like the Force.”

Read more of Parrish's post through the Quick Links below.

Quick Links: 

• Jedi Training: Developing Habits of Perception in Our Disciplines by Gillian Parrish (August 7, 2017)

The Packaging Anthropological Knowledge Part Two

As an anthropologist teaching technical communications, I often reflect on the merits of active, concise, and accessible communication styles that I didn't learn while studying my undergraduate or graduate degrees.

If I were to summarize how I would change my anthropological writing on account of teaching technical writing, I would advocate for the following three rules:

1. Write in an active voice. Always. 
2. Connect all the dots. Give readers a sense for what they're going to read, write it, then summarize it for them. It's not a mystery novel. Descriptive prose has a place of course (C. Geertz need not roll over in his grave) - perhaps in ethnographic vignettes or when describing initial contexts or landscapes.
3. Write with information/knowledge dissemination in mind. Accessible writing will make your ideas spread further.

Academia Obscura recently (Jul 28 2017) posted about a resource for academics, Doodling for Academics by Julie Schumacher. The publisher's website writes that the resources is a bitingly funny distraction designed to help you survive life in higher education without losing your mind. Sardonic yet shrewdly insightful, Doodling for Academics offers the perfect cognitive relief for the thousands of faculty and grad students whose mentors and loved ones failed to steer them toward more reasonable or lucrative field.

Below are two sample doodles from the book. You can access a sampler of the book here.

Doodle from Julie Schumacher via Academia Obscura

Doodle from Julie Schumacher via Academia Obscura

While this book is supposed to be a fun mental release from the hierarchies and pseudo-political power plays, the peculiar colleagues, the over-parented students, the stacks of essays that need to be graded ASAP - I also see these doodles as examples of repackaging knowledge in new and accessible ways. 

While these doodles may be the starting point for larger discussions (as the medium would limit the capacity to elaborate on complex ideas), I can think of a place for such doodles in ethnographic texts perhaps as a means to personalize readers' experiences of the work as a colouring book (the original intention of Schumacher's book). 

One could also use such doodles and the act of colouring as a methodology. For example, I'm reminded of Diane Farmer, Jeanette Cepin, and Gabrielle Breton-Carbonneau's article in the Journal of Social Science Education which can be found here Students’ Pathways Across Local, National and Supra-National Borders: Representations of a Globalized World in a Francophone Minority School in Ontario, Canada

Any time that I see Anthropologists and Scientists try to disseminate their work in new and creative ways, I can see its role as publicly engaged intellectuals.

Quick Links:

• Students’ Pathways Across Local, National and Supra-National Borders: Representations of a Globalized World in a Francophone Minority School in Ontario, Canada Diane Farmer, Jeanette Cepin, and Gabrielle Breton-Carbonneau (3-2015 JSSE)
• Doodling for Academics: A colouring and activity book. Julie Schumacher (2017)
• Doodling for Academics - A sampler. Julie Schumacher (2017)
• Doodling for Academics. Academia Obscura (July 28, 2017)
• The Packaging of Anthropological Knowledge and Its Merits According to Market Research Experts. Anthro Everywhere! (June 29 2017)

Anthropologists everywhere! Alternative Anthro Careers

There have been quite a few posts on this blog where we discuss not-so-run-of-the-mill jobs that anthropologists find themselves in (click on our label 'what can anthro do?', our page on Applying an anthropological perspective outside of university, and see quick links below). This is also the case for Christine Moellenberndt who is an Anthropologist & Community Manager at Reddit.

In their post entitled Argonauts of the Internet: Anthropology and Community Management Mx. Moellenberndt describes what the discipline of anthropology is 'good' at doing...and (drum roll) it turns out to be quite a lot.

Mx. Moellenberndt works in a field that is populated largely by those with marketing and business backgrounds and yet, the author finds that their anthropological training sets them up to ask questions that drive the very work that they do: While all of those fields can provide the bulk of the skills needed to be good community managers, it is anthropology that holds a key in tying all of these threads together for effective community management.

Mx. Moellenberndt argues that While this may not be “fieldwork” in the traditional sense of going into a foreign culture and living in it for long periods of time, it is still fieldwork and the work that comes out of it can be ethnography (basically, this is kind of the end result of fieldwork; the write-up of what was observed and concluded). Without good, grounded ideas as to who your community is, what they want, and how they function, you can’t be an effective community manager.

Read more about Mx. Moellenberndt's work at Reddit and the role of anthropology from our quick links.

Quick Links:

• Applying an anthropological perspective in health Anthro Everywhere! (April 27 2017) 
• #AltAc Anthropology Careers - The draw of experiential design firms Anthro Everywhere! (June 05 2017) 
• Anthropology in a Tag Line Anthro Everywhere! (July 20 2017) 
• Argonauts of the Internet: Anthropology and Community Management, Christine Moellenberndt Reddit Blog (May 16 2017) 
• To PhD or not to PhD... Anthro Everywhere! (July 13 2017) 
• Undergrad & MAs career paths Anthro Everywhere! (May 22 2017)
• Our page featuring many interesting career paths anthropologists are pursuing: Applying an anthropological perspective outside of university

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 ways, new technological platforms -- such as digital communications and social media -- are already embedded with certain cultural assumptions. At the same time, there are always unexpected outcomes and unforeseen ways in which the incorporation of new media and technology shape our relationships with others, our environments, and ourselves.

Facebook Memories

This relationship between cultural actors -- including the new digital "memory" systems in our lives -- is what Molly Sauter (PhD student in Communications Studies) addresses in Instant Recall (27 June 2017, Real Life). In this short analytical piece, Sauter addresses three types of memory system and how they have shaped our memories, and the act of remembering: predictive text, "data doppelgangers constructed for ad targeting," and more particularly, reminiscence databases (e.g. Facebook Memories).

Sauter explores how digital evocations of memory differ from physical ones, such as "yearbooks, photographs, cars, houses, trees, gravestones."

These physical evocations age, and their value and veracity as objects of testimony ages with them and us. They date, they fade, they display their distance from the events they are connected to and their distance from us. Digital memory objects, on the other hand, although they might abruptly obsolesce, do not age in the same way. They remain flatly, shinily omni-accessible, represented to us cleanly both in the everlasting ret-conned context of their creation and consumption. 

Contrast this algorithmic "remembering" with how another contributor to Real Life describes the nostalgic recreation of community online through her mother's experience using Facebook in "Post, Memory" (7 July 2016, Real Life). Kelli Korducki's mother had grown up in a small Salvadoran village, once decimated by civil war, and now rebuilt online as a closed Facebook group called “Memorias de ______,” boasting "a membership in the low hundreds, which is impressive given the village’s reasonably small size." 

In this digital community space, "long-lost neighbors and relatives resumed contact after decades of quiet separation, strewn from Virginia to Montreal to Los Angeles and points above, below, and in between." On Facebook, members and diaspora descendants of this scattered community came together, sharing and creating artifacts of the long-gone community, juxtaposed with images and details of the living village today.

What do these different insights onto the intersections of memory or the act of remembering with social media tell us about everyday life? How might these examples be useful in discussing social relationships, memory, cultural artifacts, or even imagined communities?


Quick links:

• Instant Recall (27 June 2017, Real Life)
• Post, Memory (7 July 2016, Real Life)
• You might also want to check out some of the other pieces in Real Life magazine, which all address aspects of living with technology -- including a number of articles that incorporate an anthropological perspective.
• Media, language, and social relationships (20 April 2017, anthro everwhere!)
• Anthropologizing Software and Design (12 January 2017, anthro everwhere!)

Anthropology against white​ supremacy

In this post from the AAA's Anthropology News, Luzilda Carrillo Arciniega offers "Six Ways Anthropologists Can Challenge White Supremacy" (27 March 2017).

1. Create purposeful students
2. Critique identity politics
3. Create brave spaces
4. Break the Silence
5. Push back against hierarchies
6. Remain politically engaged

While many of us as anthropologists consistently strive to be critical of identity politics, power inequalities and structures, I think it is really valuable to consider here the banal (but powerful!) work we already do addressed in points 3 and 4 -- as Jennifer wrote about earlier this week.

One of the things that anthropologists are known for is asking those "dumb" questions about things that are otherwise taken-for-granted and common sense and allowing ourselves to feel uncomfortable as we learn in new cultural moments and contexts. In our classrooms and beyond, it is important for us to make this space not only for ourselves, but for our students and interlocutors as Carillo argues: "Critical dialogue cannot occur unless individuals are open to being vulnerable. Creating a safe space should not be conflated with comfort, convenience, or personal satisfaction."

Quick links and further reading:

• Luzilda Carrillo Arciniega (on Twitter), "Six Ways Anthropologists Can Challenge White Supremacy" (27 March 2017, Anthropology News)
• Building Vocabularies for Everyday Discussions about "Race", racism, and Inclusion/exclusion (10 April 2017)
• More anthro everywhere! posts on race & racism and systemic inequality
• anthro everywhere!'s page of Reading Lists & Syllabi Resources including Anthropoliteia's #BlackLivesMatter Syllabus, the Black Disabled Woman Syllabus, and reading lists for Decolonizing Anthropology (and beyond!)

When Cognitive Mapping and Life Histories Meet

Anthropologists use life histories as a means to shed light on larger systems through the eyes of one individual, over time. Atlas Obscura author Lauren Young recently reminded readers of Michael Druks work, called Druksland. This portrait captures Druks' life story through cartography.


Young writes: Outlining the shape of his head, Druks’ conceptual map incorporates features you would see on a topographical map, including coordinates, bodies of water, and a map legend. Yet the map also serves as an unconventional self-portrait, the coordinates corresponding to major life events, significant people, and important institutions. Druks shows how the contours of a face could be a more complex terrain than any geology on Earth.

This is an interesting example of a medium where cognitive mapping and life histories may meet.

Special Friday Edition: The Dutch Election, Domino Effects and Wilders' Patriotic Spring

Both contributing bloggers on this website completed their PhD research in the Netherlands. Why? We were drawn to understand the influence of nationalistic Dutch politicians on the everyday lives of ordinary Dutch residents. The platforms and rhetoric of these nationalistic politicians sought to re-define and identify what it meant to be 'Dutch' in an age of (seeming) globalization.

In a recent chapter (Long 2016) for Loring and Ramanathan's Language of citizenship and immigration: policies, pedagogies, and discourses, I introduced the Dutch context as follows:

Following the deaths of right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and film director Theo van Gogh in 2004, the Netherlands generated its own brand of Islamophobia that dominated the European landscape, especially when it was led by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim politician, Geert Wilders. Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) received significant popular support and became one of three ruling political parties in a Dutch coalition government between 2010 and 2012. Although this coalition dissolved, the PVV is currently ranked at its highest popularity according to national opinion polls (Bolt, 2013). Wilders most recent platform (the platform he ran on and secured the second largest number of seats with) included breaking ties with the European Union and securing social supports for older generations, in addition to his long-standing platform concerning the decrease in non-western migration and a renewed interest in Dutch national identity (Party for Freedom, 2012).

In a recent  article (Mosher 2015) for a special issue in the Journal of Social Science Education, Rhiannon wrote:

Muslims especially have been positioned in the context of the Netherlands as having dramatically different – even incommensurable – cultural, historical, and political values and norms than the national majority (cf. Long, in this issue; Silverstein, 2005; Duyvendak, 2011; Geschiere, 2009; Stoler, 1995). The challenges for the civil enculturation of non-Western adult newcomers have contributed to the consensus across all sections of mainstream Dutch society that the Dutch government is at least partially to blame for the failure of many newcomers to demonstrate an appropriate fit through language and social skills acquisition. At the same time, support for cultural diversity (including religious diversity) has come under increasing scrutiny.

The context for our original doctoral research seems not to have significantly changed since 2009-2010 when we conducted our research. Wilders' warnings against what he calls "the Islamification of Western Culture" had received attention from national and international audiences in the past; however, his (rather monotonous) platform and bid for the top spot in this national election received even more attention because journalists likened him to the divisive politics of the US President. Indeed, international media called Wilders the Dutch Donald Trump, on account of Wilders' "call to Make the Netherlands great again (1), (...) for his increasingly outrageous positions, and his reliance on social media to circumvent the press and speak directly to the people" (Wildman, Vox, 15 March 2017)

Wildman quotes Dr. Sarah de Lange from the University of Amsterdam, who argues that Wilders is different from Trump because:

1. He's more ideological with a better understanding of society
2. He's more rational and calculated with a focus on strategy
3. He's more interested in exerting influence than gaining absolute power

And I would agree - the racism, ill-will, ill-feelings, and questioning that surged through these elections does not dissipate with the fanfare of election night. Instead, this energy digs roots and finds its way into everyday interactions and residents' relationships.

Much of the news coverage of Wilders' defeat has the hallmarks of the 'good triumphed (no pun intended) over evil' story. Yet, Martijn de Koning (on his blog: Closer, March 16, 2017) has argued that

the Dutch did not stop the domino effect of racist populism: the mainstream parties have taken over the racist rhetoric that was the result of the populists strategy of politicizing Islam, integration and immigration. And worse, the rhetoric of the domino effect [which he defines as the outcome of the Dutch elections and its possible influence (i.e. the domino effect) on other racist populist parties running in the French and German elections and set after Brexit and Trump’s election victory] reproduces the invisibility of the racist mainstream as well as Dutch nationalism by directing our attention to Trump’s US and Brexit as symbols of what went wrong and the Netherlands as a bulwark against what PM Rutte has called the ‘wrong kind of populists‘.

While Wilders' party didn't win top place, his form of politics and his bid for influence, rather than power, did triumph. What I haven't heard many scholars discuss however, is Wilders' idea of the Patriotic Spring.

In late 2016, Wilders first used the term "Patriotic Spring" to describe Donald Trump's win and England's vote to leave the European Union. Wilders described this movement as "historic", "a revolution" and tweeted #MakeTheNetherandsGreatAgain for the purpose of taking back the Netherlands.

I think this term would prove to be an important term to unpack in order to more fully understand the role of continued colonialism in Wilders' political ideology and platform.

Alhassan (N.d.) argues that the term “Arab Spring” is 

not a new one and was originally applied to describe a prescient “democratic domino effect” that was expected to spread its “seeds” across MENA after the elections in Iraq in 2005. “Arab Spring” and the metaphor of spring as a time of “renewal” also historically defined “liberal reform” movements that were either short-lived or quickly crushed (like the “Prague Spring” of 1968 that was put down by the USSR).

This continuation of the colonial framework that Alhassan writes about was recently articulated in Sarah Salem's post (thanks to de Koning for pointing out this blog and post) about the Dutch context.

Salem writes about the continued colonial framework that positions racialized identity at the center of Dutch politics and identity-making. She argues that "the Dutch self is a racialized self. This is not new, but as old as the Netherlands itself." Check out her blog post at the link above for a more detailed overview.

In sum, I think Wilders' use of the term Patriotic Spring is an example of a westernized misunderstanding, what Alhassan has argued as an Orientialist view, of the (dignity) revolutions in MENA since 2005. It is also an attempt however to appropriate not only the populist but perhaps includes an undercurrent of radicalism, dangerousness, and revolution by and for the people. In much of Wilders' dialogue, I see a desire to spark his followers into action. This incendiary approach envelopes a narrative of the Wild- (and Arab) East, a play on words here from the Wild West. If this is the case, Wilders' use of the "Patriotic Spring" works not only to erase its original meaning as experienced by those in MENA, but also continues to build on and appropriate the term as used by Orientalists and conservatives in "the West". It's only difference perhaps is its play on the radicalism and populism that this term evokes.

Note from both Rhiannon and Jenn:
We are interested to see how these relationships continue to unfold. We welcome your thoughts on this (and any other) posts - to get in touch, you can email or tweet at us (see our contact information on the blog).

End Notes
(1) Rhiannon made a great point about this hashtag: It's important to recognize the use of the English language in Wilders' tag, which plays interestingly into the broader language politics and questions of acceptably cultural difference in the Netherlands in a much more banal way.

Quick Links: 

News Articles

• Alhassan's post 
• Wildman's Vox news article 

Blog Posts:

• Martijn de Koning's Closer blog post
• Salem's blog post

Articles:

• Rhiannon Mosher's JSSE article: "Speaking of Belonging: Learning to be “Good Citizens” in the Context of Voluntary Language Coaching Projects in Amsterdam, the Netherlands"
• Jennifer Long's JSSE article: "Investigating Multiculturalism and Mono-Culturalism Through the Infrastructure of Integrationin Rotterdam, the Netherlands"

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 Store?

Every city has something like this, the anchor tenant in many city-dweller’s mental maps of their neighborhood. But in many places, you’d be laughed out of the building for calling it a “convenience store”. It’s a bodega. It’s a packie. It’s a party store. What you call the store on the corner says a lot about where you live. 

Bodega in New York City

Instructors might ask students to unpack these examples and to think about how this social institution, and the name that we have for it connects to local contexts. How do histories (such as of migration), geography, and politics come together to shape urban spaces?

The Anthropology of Trump: turning an ethnographic lens on Trumpland

Way back in March we posted about The Anthropology of Trump: It's getting political in here (16 March 2016). In this earlier post, Jenn reviewed Paul Stoller's analysis of Trump's popularity.

Recently, an ethnographer working for ReD Associates, Morgan Ramsey-Elliot, has provided some nuanced insight into Donald Trump’s support in small-town America. (Perhaps underscoring George Leader's argument that Universities Need Anthropology Now, More Than Ever, Huffington Post Blog, 20 October 2016).

"Trump Towns" (Quartz, 22 September 2016), highlights the incredible value of ethnographic research in making sense of social worlds. The insights that Ramsey-Elliot shares about people in small towns across America -- for instance in Texas and Colorado -- help to illuminate how Trump has gained such a vibrant base. What is striking from a methodological perspective, however, is that Ramsey-Elliot wasn't doing working on a project about political values when he learned these things. He was actually working as "an ethnographer with the consulting group ReD Associates, studying the lives and values of truck owners on behalf of a major US auto manufacturer." But, through his daily immersion in all aspects of his research participants' lives, he was also able to arrive at more complex understanding of why this ongoing American election cycle has taken on the character it has. Unsurprisingly, (to an anthropologist, anyway) this has to do with culture.

For instance, in teasing apart why so many Trump supporters oppose minority rights (e.g. "“homosexual” and “feminist” agendas") as 'selfish', Ramsey-Elliot argues that the answer is actually not as simple as prejudice alone:

It is true that fundamental prejudice plays a role in some conservatives’ attitudes toward minority groups. It is also true that, to Robby’s family and others like them, groups of people who are actually fighting for basic human rights look like individuals who have decided to elevate their own identities and needs and appear to be calling for special privileges. This idea is anathema in communities that value, and in many ways are structured around, subsuming individual needs and desires for the good of the group. For many I met in rural America, “minority” agendas and the individualism they are seen to represent are a manifestation of a larger problem: the vanishing respect for duty and self-sacrifice for the sake of the local community.

Cultural and structural changes in small-town life have deeply affected long-standing relations of mutual-help and community obligation. In this context, the discourse that Trump employs and his cultivated 'authentic' persona (not unlike that of Toronto's former Mayor Rob Ford) -- even when it is riddled with contradictions -- "feels far more authentic than that of more polished political elites."

[Trump's] frequent appeals to loyalty are a great example of how this works. Loyalty is, by definition, a deeply personal and contingent thing, and it’s a trait he has systematically attempted to build into a pillar of his personal brand (his proven track record of disloyalty is beside the point).  ...
The logic of such appeals to loyalty—contingent, personal, experiential—taps into a deeper reality about how many people relate to each other in rural America. 

Ramsey-Elliot, a New Yorker, concludes by arguing that people living on the "coasts" wont be able to understand the appeal of Trump until they gain a more nuanced understanding of everyday life across rural America. In other words, in order to understand these political divisions in America, we need to think like anthropologists about the social divisions.

Quick links and further reading:

• anthro everywhere!'s The Anthropology of Trump: It's getting political in here (16 March 2016)
• "Trump Towns" (Quartz, 22 September 2016) An ethnographer has a new explanation for Donald Trump’s support in small-town America
• Anthropologist Sarah Kendzior's take on how "Our fate was sealed long before November 8 (and not because the election’s rigged)" (De Correspondent, 2016)
• "Universities Need Anthropology Now, More Than Ever" (Huffington Post Blog, 20 October 2016).
• "Why Rob Ford appealed to so many in Toronto" (Toronto Star, 22 March 2016)

Is it good enough to think like an Anthropologist?

In recent weeks we've been posting about the use of anthropological tenets and ethnographic practices beyond traditional field sites. This topic was addressed from author Elizabeth Durham's perspective in a recent article post on Somatosphere (a collaborative website covering the intersections of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, cultural psychiatry, psychology and bioethics), called  "The Good Enough Anthropologist"

In it, Durham speaks about the anthropological response to the recent Ebola outbreak and the push by diverse responders for anthropologists to take a culturalist perspective - e.g. what cultural practices might be undermining the Ebola response process - to help fight the epidemic.

Below is a pertinent quote from Durham's article although it doesn't include Durham's definition of the "good enough Anthropologist" or her conclusion:

As such, it suggests that anthropologists ought to expand our academic practice to encompass both research and better public relations: non-anthropological actors become good-enough anthropologists when we ourselves are not good enough at self-promotion, at clearly defining and communicating what it is we do, how we do it, and why we do it this way.

The issue of what constitutes “good anthropology” is, of course, controversial within anthropology: this is part of the issue, albeit an inevitable one. Moreover, while good-enough anthropology easily veers into culturalism, I can also admittedly see where it has the potential to foster a more democratic anthropology (though this is not the direction it has largely taken thus far), raising and/or reopening key questions similar to the one above. Who controls public anthropology, if anyone? What can or should “real” anthropologists do when faced with a public anthropology they may find dismaying? Is public anthropology an anthropology with a public presence, an anthropology practiced by publics, or both? Do attempts to trace such public afterlives aid the democratization of anthropology, or do they border on a way for scholars to reassert authority over the works they write? These are questions whose value lies more in discussion than in simple answers. 

Their article is worth a read as are the comments section. For example, Daniel Lendie writes:

But I think you are on the right track when you ask about our role as public anthropologists. For me, that can mean an effort to overcome our own focus on research and critical engagement to start to address questions that are relevant and immediate for others. We teach publicly all the time; we can apply that same anthropological approach that we use in the classroom to other arenas. But that means getting out of our comfort zones (our areas of deep expertise), and also having the institutional support for doing such work.

Finally, I’d push anthropologists to look closely at what we’d want instead of culturalism. We need a theory for this type of academic practice and engagement; just critiquing “culturalism” doesn’t do much to develop a viable way to add anthropology into the work around Ebola (and other public issues/problems) in a viable and satisfactory way. “Quick ethnography” might be a methodological way to do that, but we need a conceptual tool set for this type of work as well, one as much oriented to public and applied issues, to “How to?” sorts of questions.

Anthropology really seems everywhere these days - so where, if anywhere, are its limits?

Reflecting on Métis identity

This post comes from the âpihtawikosisân blog. The author, Chelsea Vowel, describes herself as "Métis from the Plains Cree speaking community of Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta. She currently lives in Montreal, Quebec. Her passions are: education, Aboriginal law, the Cree language, and roller derby. She holds a BEd, an LLB and teaches indigenous youth."

Her blog links to a number of resources on Aboriginal issues in Canada, including a thorough collection of Online Learning Resources, An Open Letter to Non-Natives in Headdresses, and a regular blog.

One such blog post is "You’re Métis? So which of your parents is an Indian?" In this post, the author reflects on Métis identity, and addresses common misconceptions that she has faced in her own experience, what identity means, and some of the legal and political issues that affect these peoples. Here's a short except from this excellent post:

"My understanding of my Métis identity has shifted considerably over the years.  You see, I was only about 5 years old when the term Métis was recognised officially in section 35(2) of the Constitution Act of 1982.  I point this out because although the term Métis predates that official recognition, it was not necessarily the most common term in use. Often we were referred to in the Prairies as the Road Allowance People.  The term ‘halfbreed’ still got tossed around a lot when I was growing up and was pretty ubiquitous in my parent’s and grandparent’s time.  You can imagine how confusing it is in terms of forming an identity, to be known by so many ill-defined names."

Check out this post and others on the âpihtawikosisân blog, or read them in Vowel's forthcoming book, Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada.

Quick links and further reading:

• "You’re Métis? So which of your parents is an Indian?" (2016, âpihtawikosisân blog)
• âpihtawikosisân blog
• Online Learning Resources, 
• An Open Letter to Non-Natives in Headdresses
• An article about Michif artist and activist, Christi Belcourt, that addresses how she has experienced discrimination from within the indigenous arts community: "Christi Belcourt turned an act of discrimination into a work of art" (2016, CBC)

One person's trash...

One person's trash is another's treasure... or data, if you are an archaeologist or anthropologist working in a landfill.

Places where trash builds up can provide archaeologists important clues into past lives. For instance, in Toronto, Canada, when the Major League Baseball stadium was first built, archaeologists surveying the site found many interesting artifacts from what was then the lake shore in the early city. Most items had either been lost in the lake, or were part of the landfill extending the reaches of the city into the lake.

Archaeological teams have also dug into our more recent past. For instance William Rathje's Garbage Project, which "explores modern waste disposal, consumption, and recycling patterns" across North America. Or, the recent dig for Atari in a New Mexico landfill, which became a much publicized spectacle that "provided the necessary means to directly access the contemporary past for purposes of archaeological and historical research."

But, sociocultural anthropologists -- like Joshua Reno -- are also beginning to turn their attention to landfills and the people that work in this "secret world of activity that [is] utterly necessary to all of us, but completely hidden from most of us." In this interview, Reno digs into our social relationship with garbage.

What does trash, as material culture, tell us about our social worlds?

Quick links:

• "8 things they found when they dug under the Rogers Centre" (2015, Toronto Star)
• "Seeking the Truth in Refuse" (1992, New York Times)
• "Museums: The Truth is in Our Trash" (2002, Archaeology)
• "The Garbage Project & "The Archaeology of Us"" (by William Rathje, 1996, Symmetrical Archaeology)
• "Why We Dug Atari" (2014, The Atlantic)
• "The Anthropologist in the Landfill" (2016, the Atlantic)

Ghettos

Ghettos. We commonly associate the term today with places like "effective social or ethnic ghettos, from the favelas of Brazil to the mostly black urban neighbourhoods of the United States and the predominantly north African banlieues of Paris."

But this term, as we learn in "Inventing the Ghetto" (2016, 1843 Magazine - The Economist), has its own specific history that dates back 500 years to the establishment of the Jewish ghetto in Venice on March 29th 1516.

I like this piece for the ways in which it connects the history of this ghetto in Venice, with the treatment of its Jewish inhabitants, and the growth of the city, but also with contemporary issues of social inequality and issues of space and place. Instructors might like this piece as background for a lecture on social inequality, space and place, or gentrification. I can also see it being an interesting think piece for upper year students to think about how social contemporary issues have connections to broader historical, political, and economic processes and precedents.

How To Support Blacademics & Be an Ally

If you are working in academia, this post is for you.

Ellie Adekur has created this important resource on How To Support Blacademics: For Non-Black Faculty and Grad Students Teaching Black Faces in White Spaces.

Adekur is a is a PhD student in Human Geography at the University of Toronto, as well as human rights activist and social justice educator. This resource was posted today on Adekur's Facebook page in response to the latest instances of anti-Black violence witnessed across North America this week, and the need to address "anti-Black racism in classes, tutorials and office hours: professors and teaching assistants screening violent content, leaning on racist tropes, ignoring anti-Black comments, or singling out Black students to address problematic comments/opinions in the room."

This resource is not exhaustive, but it is a useful and important place for instructors to start rethinking their engagements in and outside of the classroom in relation to racism and social injustice. It contains simple, invaluable points or reminders about how to support our colleagues, students, and others in the university. As social scientists, especially as anthropologists, we already know these things intellectually, but for non-Black academics remember:

3. If you're not Black or racialized, don't pretend to be an expert. Don’t pretend to have all of the answers, or feel like you need to. Your empathy and allyship are constantly practiced, learned and always developing. 

You may also wish to check out this page of Links for Allies from White Ribbon.

UPDATE - 10 July 2016: Jennifer has also pointed out this article, "11 Common Ways White Folks Avoid Taking Responsibility for Racism in the US" (2016, Everyday Feminism), written by Robin DiAngelo. As a white educator who focuses on critical multicultural and social justice education, DiAngelo draws on her own observations as a white person facilitating anti-racism workshops with white Americans, and the outrage she frequently meets in trying to engage them in discussions of racism as systemic. Part of learning to engage as an ally requires that people with privilege (here, those who identify/ are identified as white) be willing to hear feedback on how their actions contribute to systemic violence. This might be a useful piece for students to reflect on in the classroom, perhaps as an exercise leading to a discussion about contemporary race and racism.

Quick links:

• Ellie Adekur's How To Support Blacademics: For Non-Black Faculty and Grad Students Teaching Black Faces in White Spaces (2016)
• Links for Allies from White Ribbon
• 11 Common Ways White Folks Avoid Taking Responsibility for Racism in the US (2016, Everyday Feminism)
• Via Facebook, MTV's Franchesca "Chescaleigh" Ramsey debunks 4 big myths about the #BlackLivesMatter movement that many students have probably encountered in just 4 minutes. (This easy, accessible piece also references law professor Patricia Leary's response to her students' complaints about her wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt earlier this year.)

An anthropologist walks into... a gym

Katie Hejtmanek is a cultural anthropologist who studies the culture of strength sports (powerlifting, weightlifting, CrossFit) in the United States.

Her articles for BarBend offer not only interesting insights into her particular 'tribe' but also an easy intro to what ethnographic field research is actually about. For instance, in "Anthropology 101: A Cultural Anthropologist Walks into a Gym" (27 May, 2016), Hejtmanek discusses how she set out to understand the the cultural shift where 'strong is the new skinny': "new phenomenon that women are seeking out fitness activities that actively promote muscular bodies. We’ve been taught that the ideal female body is skinny. It is not “natural” or universal to idealize a skinny female body, rather it has been an American cultural ideal."

What are the larger forces at play behind this cultural shift? What are people saying about their participation in strength sports, and how does this reflect or differ from what they do in strength sports spaces?

In her recent article in this ongoing series for BarBend, Hejtmanek answers some of these questions in "The Morality of Fitness: An Anthropologist’s Observations in a CrossFit Gym" (8 June, 2016). In connecting the official 'origin stories' of CrossFit gyms with the local tellings of these stories in the context of (potential) gym members lives, we see how cultural and moral worlds are created by "1) by mobilizing moral frameworks of health, and 2) linking the activity with a community and relationships."

Quick links:

• All of Katie Hejtmanek's articles on the anthropology of strength sports at BarBend.
• "Anthropology 101: A Cultural Anthropologist Walks into a Gym" (27 May, 2016)
• "The Morality of Fitness: An Anthropologist’s Observations in a CrossFit Gym" (8 June, 2016). 

Re/telling the story of Canada's Residential Schools

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada investigated the impact of Canada's Indian Residential Schools system on students, their families, and indigenous peoples across Canada more broadly. The report, which concluded that this schools system was part of a systematic government program of cultural genocide, was just the first step toward reconciliation and healing for those affected, and for relations between all Canadians and indigenous peoples on whose land Canada was founded.

As was evidenced in the joint CASCA SANA meetings held at Dalhousie University this past May, many projects are now underway to begin and continue this journey of healing and reconciliation. Federal funding is now being made available to projects committed to this goal. At Dalhousie, Andrea Walsh (Victoria; scroll to "Current projects - Collections and Community Based Research and Curating") and Myrna Cranmer (Kwakwaka'wakw, 'Namgis) discussed "The work of redress through repatriation in the case of the Alberni Indian Residential School paintings collection." In 2013, another project was the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's creation of what is now a "critically acclaimed original ballet, based on a story by The Orenda novelist Joseph Boyden and featuring music from Tanya Tagaq" (2016, CBC). Projects are also making this history more accessible to settler-Canadians, for instance through the creation of a new Heritage Minute. For Canadians who grew up in the 1990s, we learned a lot about Canadian history through the minute-long educational shorts shown during commercial breaks called Heritage Minutes. Yet, only 6 of these minutes addressed aboriginal peoples, and none addressed the uncomfortable and shameful past of this cultural genocide... until this past week with the publication of Heritage Minutes: Chanie Wenjack. Like all of these minutes, this one provides an evocative glimpse into part of Canada's history.

Instructors teaching about colonialism and the reverberations of systemic violence against indigenous peoples might be interested in reflecting on these projects as an opening to a broader discussion on these topics. What can these examples bring to the discussion colonial legacies in the context of Canadian national identity? Why is it important to collaborate with and support indigenous peoples in the re/telling of this brutal history? How does voice and representation matter in projects of reconciliation and healing? What role has anthropology played in these historical projects, and what can anthropologists do today?

Quick links and further reading:

• Government of Canada page on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada via the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba
• Telling the dark story of Canada's residential schools through ballet (2016, CBC)
• Links on the Indian Residential School and Day School art collections project discussed by Andrea Walsh and Myrna Cranmer (CASCA SANA 2016) (scroll to "Current projects - Collections and Community Based Research and Curating")
• Heritage Minutes: Chanie Wenjack
• CASCA SANA meetings held at Dalhousie University, May 2016

UPDATE 30 June 2016: CBC now has a link to their documentary, Truth, Dance, & Reconciliation (44.10 minutes run time), about the RWB ballet about Canada's Indian residential school history, "Going Home Star." 

Interactive reading and beyond - Creating online consensus (and possibly community) one top highlight at a time

I receive a number of emails everyday from various websites that range from teaching innovations and news about higher education to curator services like Pocket.

One article set aside for me in my Pocket reading list was The Reading Habits of Ultra-Successful People on Medium. In this article, the author argued that highly successful people spend a LOT of time reading and that the purpose of their reading was more for learning and inspiration and less for relaxation or entertainment.

While I found this fascinating (apparently Pocket has my interested well-pegged like an overly-informed ex), what struck me were the options for interactive reading and highlighting options.

As I read about how Warren Buffet reads away 80% of his day or that Bill Gates reads a book a week, I noticed that certain sentences, for example links to other articles, research, surveys were hyperlinked for easy access.

But that's old tech.

If you've read online articles lately you'll notice that there are highlighting options. If you decide to highlight a sentence, a phrase or even a word for example on one of Medium's articles (and I'll just use their articles to explore these interesting options), [readers] can select a word, passage, or paragraph to highlight it. From there you can write a response to your followers, the author of the article, or the public in general.

There is also an option for 'top highlight' which are denoted in the article using an asterisk at the end of a sentence. Medium defines a top highlight as a sentence, phrase or word has been highlighted by a lot of people.

And don't forget about the ways in which you can link these articles to other social media feeds, for example, text shots are a way to integrate the Medium reading experience into your Twitter network. Highlight some text and click on the Twitter bird icon in the highlight toolbar to create a text shot that will be sent to your Twitter account.

Finally, there is an option to privately contact the author of the article with a 'private note' (ingeniously simple name ;). This setting works IF the author has enabled private notes in their settings page, a pop-up editor will appear for you to leave a message for the original author which will not be made public.

What I think might be interesting in a classroom is to ask questions about community-building on the internet, the new ways of sharing information to others, the process and infrastructure of interaction online, and how these features affect knowledge creation. One burning question for me would be: what would a top highlight do for you as a reader that a simple highlight would not?