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Ethnography.Com A group blog on a wide variety of topics related to anthropology & sociology In our view, much of these disciplines have become tedious and boring. E. B.

RIP Sociology, RIP Anthropology

We’ve given up on traditional anthropology and sociology which, despite our prescient critiques, remain unresponsive to our entreaties. They are also unwilling to publish the type of story-telling and commentary we seek for Ethnography.com. What do we seek? Please see the books by our patron saints Nigel Barley and Annette Lareau. Barley wrote The Innocent Anthropo

logist, and Lareau wrote Unequal Childhoods. Unlike the other people mentioned in this section, Barley and Lareau are alive and writing, presumably somewhere between Pennsylvania, Berkeley, England, Cameroon, and Borneo. Both write ethnography at its best—read it, laugh with it, and get a sense of what culture really means and how ethnography should be done. For this reason, Barley and Lareau are our living patron saints. Or have a look at the work of our academic ancestors. Our academic ancestors include Erving Goffman, W. DuBois, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Mary Wollstonecraft. All are dead by various causes, but all told stories to make broader social points. They were really good at this, and none of them were boring. And all told good stories (we already said that). So you first heard it here. Ethnography.com is about nothing less than upending the social sciences in The United States in particular, and the world in general. We have a mission statement, patron saints, and honored ancestors. Now we need the good writing, film, photos, and other material to spice up this new vision. AAA and ASA, you have been warned! Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention our own ancient ancestors here at Ethnography.com. Mark Dawson started the blog in 2005 with a red, white, and black design which was used until October 2013. Cynthia van Gilder, Donna Lanclos, and others have made important contributions over the years. As long as they don’t stop us, we will continue to highlight their writings on occasion because much of it is indeed timeless.



*Note Well: The opinions of the authors are entirely their own. While any author will agree that his/her opinions are shared by all right-thinking people, all opinions are the authors’ own, and not representative of Ethnography.com, or their respective places of employment. On the other hand, if more people would just back off and agree with our ideas, the world would be a better place and all known human ills would be eradicated. Or at least, that’s what our preliminary research indicates.

20/11/2022
repost via  from  “First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white mo...
17/01/2022

repost via from

“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."

Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

From the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography "Please join us for the launch of "In Search of Lost Futures: Anthropologica...
15/01/2022

From the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography

"Please join us for the launch of "In Search of Lost Futures: Anthropological Explorations in Multimodality, Deep Interdisciplinarity, and Autoethnography" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) on Wednesday, 2 February 2022 – 11:30am to 1:30pm EST.
Hosted by York University - Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology, Emergent Futures CoLab (EFC), and Centre for Imaginative Ethnography.

Visit https://sensorium.ampd.yorku.ca/lunchtime-seminar-series/ for details.

The book launch will feature editors Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston (CIE co-founding member/EFC co-founder/Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, York University) & Mark Auslander (Research Scholar, Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University), plus contributing authors Jodie Asselin, Brian Batchelor, Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, Susan Falls, Virginie Magnat, Rajat Nayyar, Felix Ringel and Marek Pawlak. Launch attendees will be able to purchase copies of the book (printed and eBook) at a 20% discount.

"In Search of Lost Futures" asks how imaginations might be activated through practices of autoethnography, multimodality, and deep interdisciplinarity—each of which has the power to break down methodological silos, cultivate novel research sensibilities, and inspire researchers to question what is known about ethnographic process, representation, reflexivity, audience, and intervention within and beyond the academy. By blurring the boundaries between the past, present, and future; between absence and presence; between the possible and the impossible; and between fantasy and reality, In Search of Lost Futures pushes the boundaries of ethnographic engagement. It reveals how researchers on the cutting edge of the discipline are studying absence and grief and employing street performance, museum exhibit, anticipation, or simulated reality to research and intervene in the possible, the impossible, and the uncertain.
For more information on the editors and presenting contributors, as well as other scheduled York University - Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology Lunchtime Seminars, please see: https://sensorium.ampd.yorku.ca/lunchtime-seminar-series/

We hope to see you there!"

We are very happy to invite you all to the book launch event for ‘In Search of Lost Futures: Anthropological Explorations in Multimodality, Deep Interdisciplinarity, and Autoethnography’
(Palgrave MacMillan, 2021) on Wednesday, 2 February 2022 – 11:30am to 1:30pm EST.

We’re hoping that you will be able to join us for this event, which will be hosted by York University - Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology, Emergent Futures CoLab (EFC), and Centre for Imaginative Ethnography (CIE). Launch attendees will be able to purchase copies of the book (printed and eBook) at a 20% discount.

Please register here: https://forms.office.com/r/zufuthzPXZ
Zoom meeting link: https://bit.ly/33onEko

The book launch will feature editors Dr. Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston (EFC co-founder/Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, York University) & Dr. Mark Auslander (Research Scholar, Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University), plus contributing authors Jodie Asselin, Brian Batchelor, Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, Susan Falls, Virginie Magnat, Rajat Nayyar and Marek Pawlak.

‘In Search of Lost Futures’ asks how imaginations might be activated through practices of autoethnography, multimodality, and deep interdisciplinarity—each of which has the power to break down methodological silos, cultivate novel research sensibilities, and inspire researchers to question what is known about ethnographic process, representation, reflexivity, audience, and intervention within and beyond the academy. By blurring the boundaries between the past, present, and future; between absence and presence; between the possible and the impossible; and between fantasy and reality, In Search of Lost Futures pushes the boundaries of ethnographic engagement. It reveals how researchers on the cutting edge of the discipline are studying absence and grief and employing street performance, museum exhibit, anticipation, or simulated reality to research and intervene in the possible, the impossible, and the uncertain.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-63003-4

For more information on the editors and presenting contributors, as well as other scheduled York University - Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology Lunchtime Seminars, please see: https://sensorium.ampd.yorku.ca/lunchtime-seminar-series/

We hope to see many of you there!

"It is an unseasonably warm fall evening in Nashville, Tennessee, and I am too old, too Black and too sober to be on Bro...
02/01/2022

"It is an unseasonably warm fall evening in Nashville, Tennessee, and I am too old, too Black and too sober to be on Broadway. The city’s main tourist artery is packed with drunk people, overwhelmingly young and white. They move as choreographed throngs in and out of supercharged commercialized honky-tonks. Not that the rural people who immortalized rustic social clubs of questionable repute would recognize these neon-illuminated monstrosities as such. Crossing Broadway is an obstacle course of unfortunate human choices. A woman next to me at a busy corner has the unmistakable visage of someone trying not to vomit in public."

It is an unseasonably warm fall evening in Nashville, Tennessee, and I am too old, too Black and too sober to be on Broadway. The city’s main tourist artery is …

28/12/2021

Repost via from on Instagram

"As a sociologist, I can say with confidence that this is 100% accurate.

There's a larger discussion to be had about race/class differences between "clients" and therapists, who diagnoses whom, why all the diagnosing (big pharma + big university $$$), and the pursuit of personal and professional power via credentialism."




See:
1. The Rise of a Therapeutic Society by Katie Wright
2. Capitalism and Mental Health in Monthly Review by David Matthews
3. The Impact of Advanced Capitalism on Well-Being by Stephen Butler

"None of your anti-racist, woo-woo bu****it, your endless quoting of Audre Lorde, your carefully arranged bookshelves fe...
29/11/2021

"None of your anti-racist, woo-woo bu****it, your endless quoting of Audre Lorde, your carefully arranged bookshelves featuring the very latest prison abolition literature, your “radical quilting” practice, your outreach to Black women in prisons, your retweeting of union organising efforts, blah blah blah, will save you from being recognised as a racist piece of s**t."

       Excerpt: I have very little in this world but my accent, which springs forth unbidden, has often saved me in some very, very sticky situations. That’s life. I use whatever powers I have. Years ago, I used to attend a lot of anti-racism and abolitionist meetings in Chicago where I enc...

02/11/2021

Corazón de Cempasúchil. (2020)

Tuxamee

"Unsolicited advice is criticism" TF"A friend recently wondered aloud whether she has a sign around her neck, invisible ...
03/10/2021

"Unsolicited advice is criticism" TF

"A friend recently wondered aloud whether she has a sign around her neck, invisible to her, that solicits strangers for advice. She enjoyed a respite from unsolicited feedback when we were at our most vigilant about social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic, but with a shift back toward normalcy, the fragile détente seems to have been called off. During a recent routine trip to her favorite cafe, no fewer than four people offered her advice on crossing the street, choosing a pastry and reading material. She takes it in stride but she knew I would be a sympathetic ear: I am on record as being very cautious about giving advice.

Part of my reticence stems from my academic training. As the saying goes, the more I learn, the less certain I am about anything. That is especially true in sociology, a discipline that is acutely aware of how much human beings introduce uncertainty into any model of human behavior.
..That is the thing about advice: It is seductive. Even though we resist being judged, we enjoy being the judge. Advice is a method by which we manipulate status to negotiate interpersonal interactions. By giving advice, we enact tiny theaters of social dominance to signal or procure our social status over others.
..We also use advice-giving to reinforce our self-perception as one who knows, and cultivate that perception in others. That is the neighborhood busybody or the office mate who stops by your desk to casually explain how you should do your job. In a nutshell, the insecure often give advice as a way to feel better about themselves. These little dramas play out all the time. Re-emerging into public life after a year and a half studiously avoiding any intimate social theaters just throws into relief how pervasive advice is during more normal times.
..Advice — the need to give it and the social value of giving it — may be about how little else we have to talk about with one another. When in want of something small to say to ease the everyday interactions we have to have with strangers, we choose to tell people what to do because that is the safest topic we can think of." By Tressie McMillan Cottom

And why, even though I hate it, small talk is so important.

"Third, we’ve come to dominate left-wing parties around the world that were formerly vehicles for the working class. We’...
28/09/2021

"Third, we’ve come to dominate left-wing parties around the world that were formerly vehicles for the working class. We’ve pulled these parties further left on cultural issues (prizing cosmopolitanism and questions of identity) while watering down or reversing traditional Democratic positions on trade and unions. As creative-class people enter left-leaning parties, working-class people tend to leave. Around 1990, nearly a third of Labour members of the British Parliament were from working-class backgrounds; from 2010 to 2015, the proportion wasn’t even one in 10. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the 50 most-educated counties in America by an average of 26 points—while losing the 50 least-educated counties by an average of 31 points.

These partisan differences overlay economic differences. In 2020, Joe Biden won just 500 or so counties—but together they account for 71 percent of American economic activity, according to the Brookings Institution. Donald Trump won more than 2,500 counties that together generate only 29 percent of that activity. An analysis by Brookings and The Wall Street Journal found that just 13 years ago, Democratic and Republican areas were at near parity on prosperity and income measures. Now they are divergent and getting more so. If Republicans and Democrats talk as though they are living in different realities, it’s because they are.

The creative class has converted cultural attainment into economic privilege and vice versa."

The creative class was supposed to foster progressive values and economic growth. Instead we got resentment, alienation, and endless political dysfunction.

Read the piece on Ethnography.Com http://www.ethnography.com/2015/03/a-season-of-homicides/
06/09/2021

Read the piece on Ethnography.Com
http://www.ethnography.com/2015/03/a-season-of-homicides/

For Marc on the anniversary of his murder in on 9/3/2014.

We don't want more touching tributes, we want justice for Marc.

"The Boondocks

Mountain House and Brush Creek are part of an unincorporated area 25 miles or so east of Oroville, California. They are tiny burgs off the old Oroville-Quincy Highway, on the way to Buck’s Lake Wilderness, Quincy, and countless outdoor opportunities in Plumas County. These areas, steeped in mining and logging history, are rural and quiet, known for ma*****na grows and conservative politics. It is a lonely wooded place. But on September 3, 2014, a burning car was found there. The car was a Ford, described as either gold or tan, and it was registered to Marc Thompson of Oroville. Marc was my student, friend, and was featured in a movie I helped make that was directed by Lee Mun Wah titled If These Halls Could Talk. But for seven days, he was simply missing—and possibly the body that was found in a burning car.

Cal Fire extinguished the fire by 7:30 pm, and at the time, the local sheriff only knew that it was Marc’s car with a body inside. They were also aware that the fire was surrounded by dry grass at the end of a hot, late-summer day. Marc wasn’t “circumstantially identified” as the body in the car for a week, not until a September 10th press release from the Butte County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO). It took until early October for the coroner’s office to confirm through DNA testing that it was him."

http://www.ethnography.com/2015/03/a-season-of-homicides/

‘RIP to our great teacher 💜“Telling the truth about the past helps cause justice in the present,” was his guiding princi...
21/08/2021

‘RIP to our great teacher 💜

“Telling the truth about the past helps cause justice in the present,” was his guiding principle, he wrote. “Achieving justice in the present helps us tell the truth about the past.”

Loewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” was published in 1995 and became a favorite of students and former students as it challenged what Loewen considered a white, Eurocentric view of the past and the stale prose and bland presentations of classroom books.’"

*his book about Sundown Towns is phenomenal and relevant as ever.

✊🏽

NEW YORK (AP) — James W. Loewen, whose million-selling “Lies My Teacher Told Me” books challenged traditional ideas and knowledge on everything from Thanksgiving to the Iraq War, has died. He was 79.

Ethnography, but call it journalism so it sells.*Excellent read, unafraid to talk climate change and wildfires
21/08/2021

Ethnography, but call it journalism so it sells.

*Excellent read, unafraid to talk climate change and wildfires

Please donate and help survivors of the  . Survivors are from rural, NorCal communities.
13/08/2021

Please donate and help survivors of the .

Survivors are from rural, NorCal communities.

The in Quincy is set up so nicely at Quincy Thrift & Company, those affected can come in and get all of your lovely donations in a wonderful store environment.

Our Susanville is being set up at CrossRoads Ministries as we speak for people who want to donate there as well.

Needs change daily and the lists are modified accordingly. Today Quincy is asking for hoodies, pots and pans and gas cans. Susanville is requesting hygiene and camping items.

If you would like to send a gift to either here are the links.

For Quincy: https://www.amazon.com/registries/custom/BPLPZY22G5ZI/guest-view

For Susanville:
https://www.amazon.com/registries/custom/1PB9AVDMNR8MC/guest-view

If you live on the west coast of the U.S....
13/08/2021

If you live on the west coast of the U.S....

RP via  from  on Instagram
13/08/2021

RP via from on Instagram

RP from  via  from Instagram (recommend reading the comments on the OP )."...understand that the ww apologized for copyi...
13/08/2021

RP from via from Instagram (recommend reading the comments on the OP ).

"...understand that the ww apologized for copying her [Ijeoma Oluo's] work but I'm personally burnt on the entire thing and the ww's claims of innocence (the comment section of her apology post, the display of white innocence is itself worth a look. Beware tho, it's triggering stuff).

I totally fell for it and thought the page was connected to Ms. Oluo's fantastic book. I'm mad at myself for not looking at the page before now. I would've known that this is a white woman instantly because every 9th post is a "good news" post and ww are so afraid of being perceived as "angry" or "negative" (anti-Blackness) that they will go out of their way to let you know that they are "positive" and "nice" and talk about how "hard" it is to learn about the scary racism. Other whytes eat this s**t up like it's candy.

But let this be a warning to whyte folk who lurk and steal.

"It's actually been really heartbreaking to hear from hundreds of people who didn't know this wasn't my page," Oluo, who is Black, said on her own Instagram account, which has just over 517,000 followers. "I think this whole thing was really duplicitous and really shady and it's harmful." Ijeoma Oluo

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.insider.com/so-you-want-to-talk-about-race-instagram-ijeoma-book-2021-8%3famp

RP from via from Instagram (recommend reading the comments on the OP).

"...understand that the ww apologized for copying her [Ijeoma Oluo's] work but I'm personally burnt on the entire thing and the ww's claims of innocence (the comment section of her apology post, the display of white innocence is itself worth a look. Beware tho, it's triggering stuff).

I totally fell for it and thought the page was connected to Ms. Oluo's fantastic book. I'm mad at myself for not looking at the page before now. I would've known that this is a white woman instantly because every 9th post is a "good news" post and ww are so afraid of being perceived as "angry" or "negative" (anti-Blackness) that they will go out of their way to let you know that they are "positive" and "nice" and talk about how "hard" it is to learn about the scary racism. Other whytes eat this s**t up like it's candy.

But let this be a warning to whyte folk who lurk and steal.

"It's actually been really heartbreaking to hear from hundreds of people who didn't know this wasn't my page," Oluo, who is Black, said on her own Instagram account, which has just over 517,000 followers. "I think this whole thing was really duplicitous and really shady and it's harmful." Ijeoma Oluo

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.insider.com/so-you-want-to-talk-about-race-instagram-ijeoma-book-2021-8%3famp

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