Highly Accurate Pictures of Anthropologists

Here's something fun for back to class: the relatively new tumblr Highly Accurate Pictures of Anthropologists!

Alex Golub posted about his new project on anthro{dendum} back in November, but it is totally worth a re-post here. Golub notes the impetus for this new tumblr as "driven by [his] long-term interest in curating open access material. The Internet is awash in high-quality material. But it’s also awash in… well, let’s just say that sometimes the signal to noise ration on the Internet is not where I’d want it to be. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to pictures of anthropologists."

Not only a fun/ useful collection to review, but the tumblr account also has lots of great links to the online sources for these photos (#FurtherReading). Golub is also taking requests if there's an anthropologist out there whose highly accurate and well-sourced picture you need.

Happy 2018!

A look back at anthropology everywhere in 2017!

As 2017 comes rapidly to a close, here's our annual round-up of some of our favourite posts and content published this year.

Thanks to everyone who has read our over 90 new posts, and checked out our growing list of dedicated pages on things like Advice for Grad Students, our expanding list of links to how people are Applying an anthropological perspective outside of university, and our newly renamed Special Series: Ethnography & ... which now features reflections and insights from blogger Jennifer Long's new pedagogical research in post-secondary education.

Looking back, here are 10 of our own favourite posts from 2017 loosely organized around some key themes...

On ethnography and fieldwork:

• Teaching ethnography (26 January 2017)
• Fieldwork: preparing for the good, bad, and the ugly (16 March 2017)
• Promoting publications behind paywalls... or anthro everywhere! in Anthropologica (15 May 2017)

Engaging anthropology through social media:

• Blogging for research (9 January 2017)
• Why We Post: Anthropologists take on Social Media (26 June 2017)
• Anthropology Podcasting (24 August 2017)
• Fake News: Questions and Resources for Back to Class and All Year Round (7 September 2017)

And to round it out, some of our favourite topical posts from 2017:

• Special Friday Edition: The Dutch Election, Domino Effects and Wilders' Patriotic Spring (17 March 2017)
• What's in a Word? The Importance of Recognizing the Etymology of Words (27 March 2017)
• #Canada150, Indigenous nations 13,000... (3 July 2017)

Thanks for reading this year! We'll be back in 2018 with more resources, more research, and more anthropology everywhere!

What were your favourite posts from 2017? Tweet us @anthrolens

Got ideas for posts you'd like to see (or see more of) in 2018? Send us an email anthrolens@gmail.com

Conferencing: How to be a great Chair

With #AmAnth2017 on the horizon, we've been sharing some timely tips for conference goers over the past two posts. Today we are sharing some resources on how to be a great chair.

The chair of any panel or roundtable at a conference has a number of important tasks. The chair must introduce the panel, the speakers, keep time, and ensure an orderly question and answer session. The chair is also usually responsible for providing some concluding comments for the panel.

As The Guardian's Higher Education Network suggests, doing these tasks brilliantly can be accomplished though adhering to a 6-point checklist. An excellent chair should be: Organized, Inclusive, Selfless, Attentive, Firm, and Positive.

In many ways, these different points come back to the chair's ability to keep good time during their session.

We all have our pet peeves during conferences. Mine is when panelists go well over their allotted time! When a speaker goes over their time, it means that everyone else -- panelists and audience -- has less time to share their ideas and questions. In effect, it means that the panel will not be as inclusive as one that gives everyone time to share their ideas, comments, and questions. It is up to the chair to be firm about how much time a speaker may take. When I have chaired, this is a conversation that I begin over email leading up to the conference, helping to ensure that everyone presenting is on the same page.

We also lose time during a session when we struggle with technology. As chair, make sure that you have a good understanding of how to work the AV equipment your panelists will need, who to contact in case it doesn't work, and take the time to load all presentations before the session begins. (A note to presenters: When everyone's PowerPoint Presentation is labelled some variation of ConferenceNameDate, it can be tricky to find the right presentation even when it is pre-loaded. Why not label your presentation some variation of YourNameConferenceNameDate?)

As the Research Whisperer has noted, "Conferences are a necessary and fun part of academia. The more professional consideration and support that’s spread around at them, the better!" So, use these tips and check out our recent posts on abstracts, posters, and moderation to help make your panel the talk of the conference... in a good way.

Quick links and further reading:

• If you are new to conferencing and chairing, you might want to check out this informative FAQ from the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association.
• The Research Whisperer's How to Chair is also a useful guide, especially regarding Q&A moderation.
• How to be a brilliant conference chair (Guardian, Higher Education Network), including such useful advice as "don’t yawn or shoehorn in your own research. And for goodness sake, get speakers’ names right"
• Writing better Conference Abstracts and crafting better Posters (anthro everywhere! 5 October 2017)
• Conferencing: Tips for Moderators (anthro everywhere! 12 October 2017)

Conferencing: Tips for Moderators

In keeping with our post last Thursday on Writing better Conference Abstracts and crafting better Posters, and with #AmAnth17 next month, I thought it timely to share this article on Tips for Moderators: Don’t Be the Barrier that Prevents Expression (Medium, 15 Sept 2017).

More than just a list of tips on how moderate (rather than dominate) a conversation between speakers, this article also provides a cautionary tale about power dynamics and voice in public platforms. At what sounds like an amazing recent event in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, "Gloria Wekker and Philomena Essed shared their experiences and thoughts as scholars, women, women of color, teachers." Amazing, except these speakers and the audience were saddled with a moderator who stole focus from the speakers rather than guiding their conversation with the audience deeper. As the author of the Medium piece laments,

The biggest failing of the moderator was one I’ve seen at nearly every panel discussion I’ve ever attended, particularly in the Netherlands. I’m sure others will recognize it. It comes from inviting brilliant people and then limiting their space for interacting with each other and engaging in meaningful conversation. It comes from misplaced and misdirected questions. It comes from the habit of control.

So, what lessons can we learn from this event and take with us as we moderate the panels or round tables or public discussions in our futures...?

1. A good moderator knows their stuff
2. A good moderator shuts up
3. A good moderator listens
4. A good moderator changes tacks
5. A good moderator asks what the speakers expect of them
6. A good moderator backs down

Check back on Monday when we will continue the conferencing tips theme by posting about how to be a great chair!

Solutionism - The Role of Technology in Solving SocioTechnical Problems

It all began, over a year ago (June 2016), with what author Ethan Zuckerman described as hate-linking. Through this practice, Zuckerman stumbled upon and read an article by Shane Snow who is the co-founder of a content-marketing platform. Briefly, in his article, Snow advocates for change in US prison systems - to lessen the financial burden and remove instances of violence - by locking everyone in a room...indefinitely and by feeding them the Silicon Valley version of Ensure. The role of technology - a crucial point to Zuckerman's response - in this prison life would be to give all those incarcerated access to VR (virtual reality) equipment and video games to socialize and learn. Snow's thought is that with less contact, there will be less violence and deaths.

In his lengthy response, The Perils of Using Technology to Solve Other People's Problems for the Atlantic, Zuckerman systematically pokes holes in Snow's proposed solutions to the US prison system (as a design developed out of context and without input from those living and working in such a system) and questions the role of technology as the prolific savior in sociotechnical issues.

As an engineering instructor at MIT, Zuckerman is interested in finding ways to: disrupt better, challenge knowledgeably, and engaging (or codesigning) new and better technology alongside the intended or target audience. Zuckerman drives home what he sees as an issue in (most) engineering design processes where many of the technologies we benefit from, weren’t designed for their ultimate beneficiaries, but were simply designed well and adopted widely.

Zuckerman draws attention to Evgeny Morozov's critique of “solutionism” which Morozov describes as the act of focusing on problems that (only) have “nice and clean technological solution at our disposal.” The problem with the solutionist critique, Zuckerman argues, is that it tends to remove technological innovation from the problem-solver’s toolkit. He advocates that robust solutions to social problems must incorporate technology as one of many levers toward social change.

Zuckerman mentions the work of Genevieve Bell at intel to briefly mention the role of ethnography and ethnographers in collecting important user information in the design process. He writes:
Understanding the wants and needs of users is important when you’re designing technologies for people much like yourself, but it’s utterly critical when designing for people with different backgrounds, experiences, wants, and needs.

Although an older article, Zuckerman's response to Snow's design situates anthropological and ethnographic analysis into the heart of the design process, where the heart does not represent the centre of a process, but the life blood of design and innovation. It's here that the expert - that is the user or client or target audience - and their knowledge is paramount.

Quick Links: 

Perils of Using Technology to Solve Other People's Problems: What will it take to design socio-technical systems that actually work? Ethan Zuckerman in the Atlantic (June 23, 2016)

How Soylent and Oculus Could Fix The Prison System (A Thought Experiment) - note, this has been revised due to feedback from the wider community - Shane Snow (Sept 23, 2015) 

For more links about technology on AnthroEverywhere!

Isuma TV - Indigenous Media collective (Sept 4 2017)

Anthropology Podcasting (Aug 24 2017)

Remembering & Memories: there's an app for that... (Jul 17 2017)

Fake News: Questions and Resources for Back to Class and All Year Round

Ah, fake news.  As a phenomenon, its truthiness is both fascinating (from an epistemological perspective, at least) and highly troubling (from the perspective of anyone who cares about information literacy, quality research, social justice, ...). Many anthropologists and others have spent a lot of time not only countering fake news messages -- the recently infamous Google Memo is a good example -- but trying to understand how and why fake news works. For instance, take Scientific American's Anthropology in Practice articles on "Understanding The Social Capital of Fake News" (28 November 2016) and "Three Historical Examples of "Fake News"" (1 December 2016).

Discerning valid arguments based on evidence from what might be called "fake news" has always been an important part of a university education. Yet, the challenges we face in how we teach this kind of critical thinking seem to be becoming ever more difficult in the current climate and through the proliferation of messages in our contemporary media.


Luckily, hardworking librarians exist to help uphold information literacy teaching and learning, like those at the Toronto Public Library. Toronto librarians have put together an accessible page on How to Spot Fake News that poses important questions to consider (and why to consider them) when assessing the validity of a message, article, post, or news site, as well as links to additional resources. While some of these additional resources are available only to TPL patrons, many more are accessible to anyone, such as this list of Research Guides:

• How Do I Spot Fake News? (University of Toronto Libraries) 
• Fake News: Resources (Indiana University East) 
• Fake News, Misinformation, and Propaganda (Harvard University) 
• Fighting Fake News: Start (Gustavus Adolphus College) 
• Evaluating Information - Applying the CRAAP Test (PDF) (Meriam Library) 
• How to Identify Fake News in 10 Steps (ProQuest)
• Updated 14 January 2018: The BBC has another 10 point checklist Fake news: Universities offer tips on how to spot it
• Updated 14 January 2018: And the TLDR version... check out this informative, accessible video from Quartz featuring journalist Damaso Reyes (3:05 minutes).

Now that you are armed with these great resources and questions, happy back to class!

Quick Links and further reading:

• What is ‘Fake News’? (Sociological Imagination, 2017)
• "Understanding The Social Capital of Fake News" and "Three Historical Examples of "Fake News"" (Scientific American's Anthropology in Practice, 2016).
• Anthropologists need to address the Google memo on its merits. Again. (Anthrodendum, 2017)
• How to Spot Fake News (Toronto Public Library)
• anthro everywhere!'s page on Reading Lists, Syllabi, & Teaching Resources including a link to the Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data Syllabus

Updated 14 January 2018

Isuma TV - Indigenous Media collective

We recently came across Isuma TV, "a collaborative multimedia platform for indigenous filmmakers and media organizations. Each user can design their own space, or channel, to reflect their own identity, mandate and audience."

The result of this non-profit collaboration is an amazing collection of "over 6000 videos, and thousands of other images and audio files, in more than 80 different languages, on 800+ user-controlled channels, representing cultures and media organizations from Canada, U.S.A., Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and all over Latin America."

Where some viewers might be attracted to content in channels like Inuit knowledge and climate change, others might be interested in how Indigenous communities are using the platform to help teach and share knowledge about Indigenous cultures and languages.

Check it out, and let us know how Isuma TV might be useful in your classroom via twitter @anthrolens or email anthrolens@gmail.com.

An Anthropologist In Situ Part II: A Business Accreditation Conference

I (Jenn) have recently been reflecting on the ways in which we can bring anthropological knowledge into non-traditional anthropological places - particularly, during conference season. First, I spoke about anthropological ethical standards in engineering classrooms and more recently, when I showcased lessons on intercultural competency during group work at an engineering conference. Just this past week, I attended a conference about accrediting our business program (within the Engineering faculty) and was struck by one unique practice of identifying other conference participants.

When one arrives at this conference, we're given your standard name badge. Like other conferences, the name of the individual (without title) is given and, in smaller font, their university's name. At anthropological conferences like the AAA or CASCA, conference-goers have seen their first name printed in bigger font than any other information in recent years, perhaps to create a more equitable approach rather than singling out or emphasizing those individuals who have risen to anthropological fame (henceforth called the anthro-glitterati ™ anthro everywhere!). This practice of identification and labeling fits into symbolic anthropology where anthropologists study "the way(s in which) people understand their surroundings, as well as the actions and utterances of the other members of their society" (Hudson et al. 2009).

Hudson et al. (2009) describe Victor Turner's perspective of symbolic anthropology where symbols help dictate and allow others to discern and interact with one another. "Turner felt that these "operators," by their arrangement and context, produce "social transformations" which tie the people in a society to the society's norms, resolve conflict, and aid in changing the status of the actors" (Ortner 1983:131).

Jenn's conference name
tag & basic ribbons

It was in this light that I understood the use of ribbons or badges at my most recent conference. As will be further described below, these ribbons allow conference-goers to discern their connection and placement of other conference-goers not only through individuals' and university names but also through the practice of attaching ribbons.

For example, I was told by a helpful and experienced conference-goer that I needed to identify my accreditation region (so that others would know which region I came from) as well as my own or my university's accreditation level (where they stood in their accreditation process, i.e. candidate, accredited, re-affirmation, etc.). You'll see from my badge I'm a first time conference-goer.

Further, if you held a position within the organization, there was a badge for that too, including evaluator, chair elect, etc.

The ribbon station (photo below) was clearly marked in one of the main halls of the conference and included many ribbons:

Ribbon Table

Ribbon choices

In addition to the ribbons describing your rank and geographic category, there were 'silly' ribbons, for example, my ("I heart bacon" and "totes magotes") ribbons:

Jenn's badge with the
addition of 'silly' ribbons

"Are you showing your ACBSP pride today? This attendee certainly is."

From my four day experience of this conference, I noticed that this practice of collecting and displaying silly ribbons was a mechanism to identify and distinguishing oneself from others and was often used as a talking piece either face-to-face or online. Here are three screen shots from the conference's twitter feed:

Tweet from Conference-Goer

#ACBSP2017 Twitter feed:

"Badges - High Impact Practice

I'm hearing about everywhere."

This last photo I took was of two participants who told me that ribbon collecting was tradition at the conference and the longer the chain, the better.

Conference attendees display their ribbons

Thus, as an anthropologist in situ, these identity making practices show a moment in time where individuals are able to identify and distinguish themselves among other conference goers and, I would argue, find new collectivity in the practice of ribbon gathering and displaying.

Quick links and further reading:

• Anthropological Ethics outside of Anthropological Classrooms (June 08, 2017, anthro everywhere!)
• An Anthropologist In Situ: Canadian Engineering Education Association 2017 Conference (June 15, 2017, anthro everywhere!)
• Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropologies (2009, Scott Hudson and Carl Smith and Michael Loughlin and Scott Hammerstedt - a student guide to anthropological theory for students)

#Canada150, Indigenous nations 13,000...

If you live in Canada, you will know that the country has just celebrated its sesquicentennial. You might have even learned the word "sesquicentennial" recently to describe what is the otherwise inescapable Canada 150.

JustUs! Coffee in Wolfville, Nova Scotia:
Canada 150; Mi Kmaki 13000

As anthropologists who have studied and taught about nationalism, it has been an interesting year, especially as the celebrations of a settler-society increasingly rub up against demands for the recognition of Indigenous peoples as founders of what is today "Canada," or as other Indigenous people publicly reject this nation-state as illegitimate (as Audra Simpson has so engagingly discussed in her work and life as Kahnawà:ke Mohawk).

As many scholars have discussed, in our national mythology, Canadians learn about Indigenous peoples are part of our foundation, our national past, rather than our national present.

The discussions that have emerged around what it means to be Canadian (or what it should mean...) have been fascinating to follow, and raise many important questions for public and ongoing discussion.

Canadian news outlets, for example, recently reported on the billboard message of Just Us! Coffee Roasters in Grand Pré, N.S. (shown right) where the owners of the coffee shop signaled "a reminder of how long this land has been inhabited: "Canada 150. Mi'kma'ki 13,000."

A local newspaper followed up with the owner who stated that the purpose of the message “[w]as meant as, we need to recognize multiple communities in our country and some of them get under-represented, I think,” he said. The Chronicle Herald went on to state that Grand-Pré is (...) located among three Mi’kmaq First Nation communities — Glooscap, Annapolis Valley and Bear River — in the Annapolis Valley. Just Us consults with them for partnerships, and recently began accepting status cards.

There are other settler initiatives that seek to educate other settlers. If one visits http://native-land.ca/ they can find an interactive map that is meant to be used as a resource to help North Americans learn more about their local history. Once there, you can search your address, or add territories to map below and click on polygons to learn more about the past histories and present narratives of where you live and work. On the 'about' page, you can read about why the author has created this resource:

"I'm Victor. I am a settler, born in traditional Katzie territory and raised in the Okanagan. I am concerned about many of the issues raised by using maps and colonial ways of thinking when it comes to maps. For instance, who has the right to define where a particular territory ends, and another begins? Who should I speak to about such matters?
There are over 630 different First Nations in Canada and I am not sure of the right process to map territories, languages, and treaties respectfully - and I'm not even sure if it is possible to do respectfully.
I feel that maps are inherently colonial, in that they delegate power according to imposed borders that don't really exist in many nations throughout history. They were rarely created in good faith, and are often used in wrong ways. I am open to criticism about this project and I welcome suggestions and changes."

In teasing apart the celebrations, the news coverage (both positive and detracting), and dialogue (both positive and negative) surrounding the Canada 150 celebration by Ottawa (our federal government) and Canadians (settlers and non-settlers alike), we wanted to highlight and recognize the opportunities for learning more.

In taking a holistic perspective from an anthropological toolkit, we can ask ourselves:

1. Who is telling the story of this celebration? Why are they telling it in this way? 
2. Whose voices may have been muted or not well listened to in this telling? 
3. What other perspective or realities exist of this event (and those leading up to it)? 

In speaking about this 150 celebration in terms of varying perspectives, one gains the sense that the national celebration that Ottawa is supporting is just one version, one rendition, of a multi-faceted history.

To end this post, the bloggers (writing under 'anthro everywhere!' for the first time) would like to leave those interested with a few links to gain different perspectives:

1. Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler (statement here)
2. Anishinabek Nation Statement on Canada 150 (statement here)
3. UNsettling 150: A Call to Action (link here)
4. UNsettling Canada150 Webinar: Ellen Gabriel, Russ Diabo, Beatrice Hunter (link here)

The Scream, on the cover, The Subjugation of Truth, by Kent Monkman (from Pamela Palmater's article in Now Toronto):

Quick links:

• Anishinabek Nation Statement on Canada 150 (7 June, 2017, Anishinabek News)
• NAN releases statement on Canada 150 (1 July, 2017, Wawatay News)
• Unsettling 150: A call to action (5 May, 2017, Idle No More)
• Canada 150 is a celebration of Indigenous genocide (29 March, 2017, Now Toronto by Pamela Palmater) 
• ‘A horrible history’: Four Indigenous views on Canada 150 (1 July, 2017 CBC News by Dakshana Bascaramurty)
• Grand-Pre coffee house garners national attention with Canada 150 sign (14 June, 2017 The Chronicle Herald)
• Native Land (2017, Victor)

• Audra Simpson's work (2017, Columbia University in the City of New York webpage)
• Canada 150 Banners Defaced, Destroyed (23, June 2017, Daniel J. Rowe, the Eastern Door)
• It’s time to recognize First Nations as founders of Canada: Steward (13, June 2017 Gillian Stewart, The Star)
• What does Canada 150 mean for Indigenous communities? (March 16, 2017, The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti - Colonial 150 art)
• Canadian 150 art (2017, Kent Hehr)
• Racist Mascots (11 April 2016, anthro everywhere!)
• More on Racist Mascots (1 June 2017, anthro everywhere!)

More on racist mascots

In my house, we are already two months into baseball season -- which also means the resurgence of critical blogs, news articles and discussions about racist mascots. We posted last year about Racist Mascots (11 April 2016), and this post adds to that earlier and ongoing discussion.

Native Mascots Perpetuate Racism Against Indigenous People

Last April as the Toronto Blue Jays battled through the American League Championship Series, Cleveland's team arrived in Toronto for Game 3 of the series amidst a legal challenge to ban the use of that team's racist mascot and name. Where many of the Cleveland fans interviewed by Canadian media feel that "the team's nickname and logo are not offensive and should not be changed," well-known Indigenous architect, activist, and officer of the Order of Canada Douglas Cardinal filed an injunction against the team's name and mascot as offensive and discriminatory. Douglas argued

that the logo reflects stereotypes and misunderstandings about indigenous cultures, lumping diverse groups of First Nations into one offensive, homogenous cartoon.
“It’s much deeper and more profound than a logo being offensive. It’s really an indicator of why that relationship (between First Nations peoples and society at large) is so flawed. Because there’s this lack of recognition of what the true conditions of native peoples have been over the last 500 years.”

The last-minute injunction was overturned by the Superior Court and Cleveland proceeded to wear their racism on their sleeves throughout the series.

The challenge to ban the broadcast of the name and mascot was successful, however, in raising this discussion again in mainstream media, and highlighting ways in which people in relative positions of power are already acknowledging the connections between this imagery and institutional racism against Indigenous peoples. For instance, much was made of how the long-time radio announcer for the Jays, Jerry Howarth, stopped calling Cleveland and Atlanta by their offensive team names since a 1992 letter from an Indigenous fan. This announcer has also made a concerted effort to stop using "terms such as tomahawk chop and powwow on the mound." Local teams with similarly offensive team names or mascots have also recently been called upon to change because of how these symbols perpetuate racism in the everyday.

Indigenous artists are also using these kinds of moments to speak back to and challenge these sports symbols of institutional racism. See for instance, Artists Respond to Cleveland Team’s Racist Logo (Canadian Art) or Culturally Appropriate Chicago Blackhawks Logo by First Nations Artist Goes Viral (Indian Country Today).

In the classroom, these team names and symbols provide fruitful examples for discussing how banal imagery comes to support the status quo of institutionalized racism, as well as more general questions of representation, cultural change and the invention of tradition.

Quick links:

• Racist Mascots (11 April 2016, anthro everywhere!)
• Canadian activist seeking injunction against use of ‘Cleveland Indians’ name (16 October 2016, Toronto Star)
• Cleveland Indians Can Use Logo and Name in Toronto, Canadian Judge Says (17 October 2016, New York Times)
• Blue Jays' radio voice Jerry Howarth sticks to 1992 vow to not say 'Indians' (11 October 2016)
• Native Mascots Perpetuate Racism Against Indigenous People (4 March 2016, HuffPost Canada)
• Cleveland Fans Say Team's Name 'Honours' Indigenous Culture (17 October 2016, HuffPost Canada)
• HuffPost Canada Will Not Be Using Racist Sports Team Names (13 October 2016, HuffPost Canada)
•  Artists Respond to Cleveland Team’s Racist Logo (18 October 2016, Canadian Art)
• Culturally Appropriate Chicago Blackhawks Logo by First Nations Artist Goes Viral (18 Vovember 2015, Indian Country Today)

Indigenous fire management

Indigenous knowledge and practices are increasingly recognized and incorporated by non-Indigenous governments, businesses, and others into their own projects. While these engagements may often take the form of cultural appropriation or theft, we also see collaborations that generate benefits for all, produce new shared knowledge and opportunities, as well as new questions and tensions.

Prescribed Burn in High Park, Toronto, Canada

In the news recently we read about local governments in Australia and Toronto, Canada incorporating Indigenous fire-management into forestry management. Known in forestry management as "asset burns" or "prescribed burns," these selective and controlled burns of dried vegetation in savannah ecosystems help to reduce dry-season wildfires. In Australia, "Indigenous rangers are collaborating with Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife rangers in Nitmiluk National Park to manage its savanna burning program, in an Australian-first agreement." This collaboration helps park and Indigenous rangers protect cultural artefacts like rock art in these areas, as well as creating carbon credits.

Historically, in the area that is today the City of Toronto's High Park, "Indigenous groups maintained fires when hunting and clearing riparian areas. European settlers suppressed the fires from the 1870s to 2000 due to safety concerns as houses were built in closer proximity to the park." In recent years, prescribed burns have been reincorporated into the human-plant relationship in this park, opening up space for anthropological interrogations of these relationships.

Anthropologist Natasha Myers's current project with Ayelen Liberona, "Becoming Sensor in Sentient Worlds" explores the possibilities of decolonizing ecology in urban park sites like Toronto's High Park. They write

Fire is of course not just a “natural” force; people all over the world use fire to sculpt lands. Oak savannahs depend on people with knowledge of fire and the skills to care for the lands. Toronto’s remnant black oak savannahas, including those in High Park, are millennia in-the-making.  These lands are the traditional territories of the Wendat, the Haudenosaunee and Anishnaabe Nations. Toronto stands on the lands of the Mississauga’s of the Credit River. Indigenous peoples cared for this land with fire for millennia before colonization. Many thousands of Indigenous and Métis peoples live and move through this region today.
Oak savannahs do not survive without people. After years of settlers’ grazing sheep and lawn mowers, Toronto’s Urban Forestry team have brought back the fires in an effort to save the oak savannahs.  Here “nature” is valued more than the Indigenous cultures that gave this land its contours and significance. In this sense, restoration efforts participate in an ongoing colonial project that continues to enforce the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands. Can we do ecology otherwise?

How do these examples of Indigenous ways of caring for the plant-people relationship suggest other ways for thinking about "nature" and "natural environments"? How might these examples contribute to or provoke classroom discussions about systemic inequality, epistemology, and decolonization?

Quick links and further reading:

• Appropriating Indigenous Knowledge: Biopiracy or Scientific Colonialism (14 March 2016, anthro everywhere!)
• Valuing Aboriginal cultural knowledge in Western science (2 June 2016, anthro everywhere!)
• Reviving food diversity through Indigenous knowledge (1 September 2016, anthro everywhere!)
• All About High Park’s Controlled Burns (2016)
• Becoming Sensor in Sentient Worlds project page
• High Park's Oak Savannahs
• Johnson, Jon. 2013. The Indigenous Environmental History of Toronto, “The Meeting Place”. In L. A. Sandberg, S. Bocking, & K. Cruikshank (Eds.), Urban Explorations: Environmental Histories of the Toronto Region (pp. 59–71). Ontario: Wilson Institute for Canadian History.
• Update 29 May 2017: A link to Myer's longer paper Becoming Sensor in Sentient Worlds: A More-than-natural History of a Black Oak Savannah via her academia.edu page

Teaching Resource: Social Inequality and Teaching in the Academy

As anthropologists, we frequently teach about power dynamics and social inequality in our classrooms. Especially in the context of efforts to decolonize anthropology, many of us reflect on these relationships within our classrooms, within the university, in our relationships with our students, and the course content/ materials we teach.

In this vein, we offer this five-part series (2017) in which sociologist Elaine Coburn explores "Social Inequality and Teaching in the Academy." Coburn writes that "We live in an unequal world; these inequalities do not stop at the university classroom door." In this series, she considers "some ways unjust inequalities are (re)produced in the classroom" and through our relationship with our students.

Part I: Pedagogy is Not (Just) About Technique
Part II: The Problems with the Conscientious Pedagogue
Part III: The Practical Challenges of Broadening the Scholarly Canon
Part IV: As Professors, We are Not All Equal Before Our Students
Part V: “Imagine Otherwise” – Ways Forward

How might Coburn's reflections and suggestions be useful for how you plan your next class?

Additional resources:

• Paige West's Teaching Decolonizing Methodologies (Savage Minds, 2016) from their 20-part Decolonizing Anthropology series.
• Our post on Reading Lists for Decolonizing Anthropology & Beyond (15 December 2016) and our page including these resources and more: Reading Lists, Syllabi, & Teaching Resources

Bringing anthropological ethics into the classroom

With the Canadian Anthropology Society Conference next week comes CASCA's Spring issue of the network's newsletter, Culture.

One item that caught our eye in this issue was Eric Henry's description of a case-study discussion activity he created for students to work through some of the potentially thorny issues anthropologists and linguists face in the field: Targaryen Ethics: A Case Study in Linguistic Appropriation Using “Game of Thrones”

Henry writes that in his linguistic anthropology course,

language appears to students to be a relatively uncontroversial topic of research – in what possible way could listening to an oral history or eliciting verb conjugations harm someone?
I wanted to get students thinking about some of the thorny ethical issues surrounding linguistic heritage, appropriation, and ownership.

In this short piece, Henry provides the short text of his case study, where the linguistic anthropologist is approached by the producers of the hit television program about adapting a local (endangered) language to fit one of the show's mythic peoples. Henry also reflects on the outcomes of working through this case-study with his students, including some of the unanticipated issues that students themselves raised about the case, and the role of the anthropological expert in terms of language revitalization, representation, development, and what ethics means in these moments.

Henry's case-study is a great example of an activity to bring an experiential learning element into the classroom through role-playing. How might you adapt this style of case-study exercise in your own teaching?

Quick links and further reading:

• CASCA's Culture newsletter
• The AAA's Handbook on Ethical Issues in Anthropology edited by Joan Cassell and Sue-Ellen Jacobs
• Chapter 3: Cases and Solutions provides 12 ethics case-studies on general ethical issues raised by practicing anthropologists similar to Henry's case study above
• AAA's Ethics blog
• The Smithsonian's Anthropology Outreach Office has also created an Ethical Dilemmas activity with 6 short case-studies
• anthro everywhere!'s Reading Lists & Syllabi Resources page

Updated 23 August 2017: Henry's article is no longer available via Culture

Science, objectivity, race, gender

Have you heard of Space + Anthropology? This group blog through Medium.com brings together commentaries on the intersections between tech, culture, space, sci-fi, art, and anthropology. We already blogged in a past post of reading lists and syllabi about Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's fantastic Decolonising Science Reading List.

Other eye-catching pieces from Space + Anthropology include "Native Sci-fi Films and Trailers"
by William Lempert and Michael Oman-Reagan's "Anthropology in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”." But we want to highlight another piece by Prescod-Weinstein: "The Self-Construction of Black Women Physicists" based on a talk she gave at Yale’s Critical Histories, Activist Futures: “Decolonizing Science by Reconstructing Observers.”

Where the work of science is to continuously excavate the boundaries of what we do not know, it becomes clear that the relationship between the questions we ask and the axioms of scientist-construction has epistemic meaning for what we may come to know about physics.
To be Black means to have your capacity to have an insightful epistemic standpoint constantly questioned. ... This epistemic alienation serves a status quo where communities at the margins are excluded from discourse about what science is and whom it serves.

How might this piece by Prescod-Weinstein be useful in raising the complexities of and intersections between science, objectivity, race, and gender with our students? How do hegemonic cultural assumptions shape how knowledge is created, validated, and disseminated?

Quick links and further reading:

• Space + Anthropology blog
• Prescod-Weinstein's "The Self-Construction of Black Women Physicists"
• Prescod-Weinstein's Decolonising Science Reading List
• anthro everywhere's
• Reading Lists for Decolonizing Anthropology & Beyond (15 December 2016)
• How gender changes our jobs (24 October 2016)

Anthropology Timeline

The Anthropology Timeline is a massive undertaking to chart the history of the discipline of anthropology. The timeline is an interactive site that charts anthropology's history along two arcs -- "publications (books, articles, etc.) and institutions (everything that isn't a publication)" -- through individual anthropologists.

According to Alex Golub, who hosts the project, it "grew organically over time. It is meant to be part of a larger research project on the history of anthropology in the UK, USA, and France from 1927 to 2027." All events are colour-coded: red - America, Canada; blue - France; yellow - UK, Australia, New Zealand; purple - Europe; Orange - Africa; Green - Latin America; light green - Asia. You can read more about the timeline's organization here.

A project like this certainly has to begin with decisions about how to organize the material it notes. The geographic/ national organization might be a useful starting place for a discussion about our discipline itself: Why are certain national histories (and languages) privileged over others? What are the effects of methodological nationalism on the discipline of anthropology?

Imaginative Ethnography Syllabi (CIE)

The Centre for Imaginative Ethnography has gathered links to a number of syllabi that "attend to some combination of performance, theatre, visual media, writing and ethnography."

This treasure trove includes inspiration from courses such as:

• GIRL STORIES: RACE, POLITICS, AND PEDAGOGY, Melissa Harris-Parry and Dani Parker
• ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE SENSES, Zulfikar Hirji and Natasha Myers, Department of Anthropology, York University
• and ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM: HISTORY AND THEORY OF ETHNOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION ON FILM AND VIDEO, Deborah Matzner, Department of Anthropology, Wellesley College

You might also wish to have a look CIE's page on "Pedagogical Experiments" or our page on Reading Lists & Syllabi Resources.

Teaching ethnography

The anthro everywhere! authors recently came across an intriguing article written for the online magazine Quillette entitled "Tyranny of the Ethnography: How Lived Experience Corrupts the Social Sciences." This piece, written by Toni Airaksinen, an undergraduate student at Barnard College, argues that teaching ethnography is misleading students, and even dangerously so. Citing her experiences of most social science classes (though all appear to be in sociology), where professors are keen to assign recent works such as Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City by Alice Goffman, or Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D Vance, Airaksinen writes that:

Ethnographies — books based on “lived experience” — are one of the most powerful types of books professors can assign. Yet, most of these books give students an extremely distorted understanding of what life is like for people living at the lowest rungs of society. Academia’s multicultural oppression fetish, which permeates the social sciences, ensures assigned books will invariably revolve around at least one aspect of the Holy Trinity of Oppression: race, class or gender.

The complicated and nuanced issues that face people of color, women, and the poor do exist in reality, of course. But ethnographies are not reality. Instead, they are a collection of the most sensational anecdotes of a novel culture deliberately curated to convey the most shock value.

As anthropologists, our first instinct is to dismiss this statement as part of a clear misunderstanding of what ethnography is and is intended to convey to the reader. Yet, as anthropologists, we also have to respect the fact that these condemnations are (ironically) based on Airaksinen's own lived experience and observations as a student. For her, the real problem with ethnography is that "books like these give students the sense that they “understand” phenomena they’ve never had personal experience with."

As university instructors with backgrounds in anthropology, we can't help but read Airaksinen's complaint as a teachable moment -- for instructors teaching ethnography in their classrooms. If this is what students like Airaksinen are taking away from the ethnographies that we teach, where are we failing them, and how can we teach ethnography better?

While we don't have all of the answers, here is a short list of blog posts and online resources shared by anthropologists on how they approach teaching ethnography as text and method in the classroom.

On encouraging critical engagement with ethnographic texts in the classroom:

• Julia Kowalski's outline for creating "Ethnography Labs: Unpacking Ethnographic Narrative" offers a useful assignment structure for helping students "recognize ethnography as a rigorous, empirical, and argumentative method by learning to identify where arguments are in ethnographic texts and to help them see the distinctions between argument and evidence." 
• Carole McGranahan's post offers her experience of teaching and tracking "What Makes Something Ethnographic?" (Savage Minds, 2012) in her classroom.

These posts offer instructive reflections and suggestions for how to teach ethnography as a method:

• Carole McGranahan's "What is Ethnography? Teaching Ethnographic Sensibilities without Fieldwork" (2014, Teaching Anthropology) 
• Lindsay A. Bell's "Teaching Culture and Methods to Novice/Non-Anthropologists" and "Five Simple Steps for Helping Students Write Ethnographic Papers" (2013, Teaching Culture) is useful for teaching students to work through their own ethnographic projects.

For instructors/ writers reflecting on ethnography as a form of writing, these discussions may be useful:

• Raul Pacheco-Vega's "On having ethnographic sensibility" (2016, personal website of Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD)
• Dhruv Sharma's "Everybody’s an Ethnographer!" (2016, Ethnography Matters)
• Robert Potts' "What’s the matter with Ethnography?" (2016, Ethnography Matters)
• Savage Minds' series: "Anthropologists Writing: The Fall 2015 Writers’ Workshop Essay Series" (2015)

If you have resource suggestions for teaching ethnography in the classroom (guiding students through critically reading ethnographic texts, as a methodology, or otherwise) we'd love to read them! Contact us via email or Twitter @anthrolens.

Reading Lists for Decolonizing Anthropology & Beyond

One of the ways that anthropologists and other scholars have responded to recent world events -- from the systemic issues underlying the Black Lives Matter movement and Standing Rock, to Brexit and the rise of Trump -- has been in the classroom. Here is a (by no means exhaustive) list of some of the great resources for building a syllabus and classroom discussions around some of these current events. You can also check out our new page that has collected together various posts already published on our blog about reading lists and syllabi.

• The Decolonizing Anthropology series via Savage Minds, reflecting and building on the work of Faye Harrison, is a good place to start thinking about what it means to decolonize anthropology.
• In response to the recent events at Standing Rock, an interdisciplinary syllabus was created by the NYC Stands for Standing Rock committee "a group of Indigenous scholars and activists, and settler/ POC supporters": Standing Rock Syllabus
• Less a syllabus than a resource, the Native Voices: Native Peoples' Concepts of Health and Illness (U.S. National Library of Medicine) is an exhibition that "explores diverse Native Peoples’ concepts of health and illness, past and present." The site provides things like video interviews with indigenous healers, leaders, and biomedical professionals, as well as other activities and suggested readings.
• We've already posted about Anthropoliteia's #BlackLivesMatter Syllabus. This ongoing project is anthropology-focused.
• There's also the interdisciplinary The Black Lives Canada Syllabus (#BlackLivesCDNSyllabus) Google Doc for those looking for a little more CanCon.
• This Decolonising Science Reading List has been put together by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (#BlackandSTEM theoretical astro|physicist), where "You’ll find texts that range from personal testimony to Indigenous cosmology to anthropology, to history to sociology to education research. All are key to the process of decolonising science, which is a pedagogical, cultural, and intellectual set of interlocking structures, ideas, and practices."
• And lastly for this post, here is a Google Doc reading list of Ethnographic approaches to understanding Trump/Brexit/new rise of conservativism.

Add it to the dictionary! Changing language, changing culture

This short article about Merriam-Webster's addition of 'genderqueer' to their dictionary is really useful for thinking about how language changes over time to describe our changing cultural worlds. According to the Hufftington Post, the dictionary's

commitment to adding new queer terms and language to the dictionary, and discussing them on social media, follows the evolution of culture.
“The set of terms relating to gender and sexuality that we’ve added in recent years is like any other; as established members of the language ― we have evidence of these terms in published, edited text from a variety of sources and over an extended period of time ― they meet our criteria for entry,” Emily Brewster, Merriam-Webster Associate Editor, told The Huffington Post. “We would be remiss not to define them.”

What does the emergence of new words tell us about our changing cultural world -- in this case about how we understand and express our gender and sexuality?

Quick links and further reading:

• Merriam-Webster Has Become A Hilarious, Shade-Throwing LGBTQ Ally 
• Other related posts on changing language and culture:
• The mutability of language (LOL!) (9 March 2016)
• How gender changes our jobs (24 October 2016)
• A historical view of a long heated debate: what could be more menacing than the singular "they"? (8 September 2016)
• Avoiding gendered bias... for instructors (25 May 2016)
• Indigenous languages and gender (10 March 2016)
• How does language shape our worldview? (17 October 2016)