Grad student John Boldt had his laptop (which held his thesis) stolen. But he backed everything up, so no big deal, right? Well: His backup hard drive was stolen too, and now he may have to drop out. Anthropologists reading this Gawker post might recall how Edmund Leach loosing all of his Kachin field notes [...]As anthropologists we research compact and ornate cultural practices that can scale up to something larger. Our informants usually aren’t aware of how their statements and practices reflect larger issues evident in broad social theories and histories—if they did than the world wouldn’t have anthropologists. They are often surprised to discover how meaningful their lives [...]I’m not a visual anthropologist or film person, but I do love films that seem ‘ethnographic’ to me — and I’ve been watching a lot of them on Netflix Streaming while taking care of my kids. Two in particular struck me as sufficiently anthro to mention here — and both have to do with Monty [...]Welcome to Around the Web, where Savage Minds maintains a green-ethos by recycling old links. Mosques in America Perhaps unsurpisingly opposition to the “Ground Zero mosque” is spawning general opposition to mosques in the United States as visibility is translating into hostility for Muslims in America. This after a Time magazine poll found that 43 [...]I wanted to share a link to this great video slide show over at Slate about how Hollywood represents foreign languages in film. How to represent foreign speech? Many filmmakers are content to shoot against a painted backdrop, toss in a few bonjours, and call it France, while others go to great lengths to have characters [...]There is a lot of great anthropology published all over the world, but most anthropologists are, iirc, anglophone, and the biggest center of anglophone publishing is the American Anthropological Association. If you think about it, the AAA has actually been pretty good about opening up some its content: all AAA publications prior to 1965 are [...]