This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Copyright P. Kerim Friedman.
we late-moderns turn to Benjamin as a kind of figure of pure authenticity, almost a source out of time and out of history. The reason for this is
The conference panel, “Scaling Linguistic Diversity: Language Standardization as a Scale-Making Project,” which I organized together with Sonia Das,
turned into a charter for all around interference for one reason: the occupying power gave itself the prerogative to
…the Schmittian concept of the political in reality participates in one of the most venerable illusions of the Western metaphysical tradition:
The skeptical reader may still be wondering, How exactly does the mathematical discourse relate or apply to the actual, material situations it
In recent years, however, when being indigenous can qualify you for particular aid or presenting concerns through the language of indigeneity has
So we can see why this sociology is so feeble when it approaches the exact sciences. It thinks it can explain hard disciplines in social terms,
Re-posted from Savage Minds. This is a view of the building where I work. The College of Indigenous Studies at National Dong Hwa University, in
Photo by 翔 If you ask most people, democracy is synonymous with elections. But, strangely enough, few people who live in electoral democracies feel
[Cross-posted at Savage Minds] In our discussions about anthropologists in the military the term “ivory tower” has come up again and again, as has
College of Indigenous Studies at National Dong Hwa University [Taiwan] http://www.ndhu.edu.tw/ POSITION DESCRIPTION AND DUTIES: The
As someone who has run several wikis, I know all too well that they are only as good as their user-base, so because I would really, really, like to
We’ve been very busy over at Savage Minds — promoting Open Access at the AAA. See our wiki for a general overview of the subject, or here to see
About half of the students at my college are Taiwanese Aborigines. Many of them are able to apply to the school directly, rather than going through
Like thousands of others, I’m hooked on The Show: a one year experiment in video blogging by Ze Frank, a web deisgner/performance artist who lives
While some of my readers are also regulars over at Savage Minds, I know not everyone is, so I though I should highlight some of my recent writing
In Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New World writers and intellectuals are banished to an island where they have complete freedom to say and do whatever
Believe it or not, I was actually given a rubber stamp so that I can rubber stamp all the ridiculous paperwork that we have to deal with. Some memos
In India, on January 12th, around one thirty in the morning, back from a long day of filming which had involved over nine hours of driving, I fired
My brother reports on how the media is reacting to the riots in France: My favorite TV program for the examination of television, Arrêt sur Images,
I long ago discovered that the best way to reduce the amount of SPAM is to have two e-mail addresses, one private and one public. I use the private
Words to live by: I’m very paranoid about any metric of productivity. One person’s wasted time is another person’s productivity. For most of my
I’d like to issue a call for anyone and everyone who cares about the study of Taiwanese history to help contribute to the Wikipedia Timeline of
A little horn tooting: My Language in Society book review on both At war with words and War of words: Language, politics and 9/11 has finally been
I missed this post by Tak at the time. It discusses the recent availability online of translations of Japanese history textbooks for middle-school:
Anyone who knows me will be shocked to find that I’ve been writing about sports, but that is just what I’ve been doing over at Savage Minds. First a
Those who haven’t been reading my other blog, Savage Minds, have been missing the huge debate that arose about a couple of posts we wrote on Jared
Back in January I read about how Taiwanese filmmaker Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖) is planning on making the “first Taiwanese epic,” about an Aborigine
I was going to write another post about what is happening over on Savage Minds but I’m thrilled to pieces with Lorenz’s review, so I’ll just quote
Last September I wrote an article in Anthropology News encouraging my fellow anthropologists to get online. I was frustrated that while there are
From an article in Zmag: [Anthropologist] David Graeber, was fired from Yale University a few days ago. Of course, that wasn’t the official
I’m just going to steal Lorenz’ entire blog post, because I have nothing to add, other than the fact I’m always happy to discover another
I’m a little surprised by Mark Liberman’s remark that Noam Chomsky’s “skepticism about the efficacy of natural selection makes him a natural ally
Mark Auslander has an interesting post on how his students are using podcasting to create an audio tour for a campus exhibit: I first thought of
Are you an anthropology blogger? If you are, and you aren’t on this list, let me know! {anthropology, blogs}
Another anthropology blogger finishes his dissertation! Congrats Alex! {anthropology, Bloggers}
孝通 (1910-2005), who died on Sunday in Beijing, is best remembered for his passion for sociology and anthropology. Full story in the
Another victory for students fighting to improve workers’ rights! The second one this month. A groundbreaking agreement improving workers’ rights
Alex alerts us to a few new Anthropology blogs. John Norvell has thrown his hat into the ring with anthroblogs.org, an MT install with a few blogs
This is a message for all those members of the American Anthropology Association out there: I admit it, I normally throw my AAA ballot in the
Last year, when I was offered the opportunity to teach a course on anthropology and photography at Haverford College, I immediately knew I wanted to
Unfortunately, the realities of the contemporary publishing industry are such that even books which are classics in their field, and which are often
Very exciting. I just discovered via a discussion on Golublog that CiteULike provides RSS feeds for a number of anthropology journals, including The
Andrea Dworkin, who died today, never claimed that all heterosexual sex is rape. statements that Dworkin makes about the meaning of intercourse are
I wasn’t surprised that the recent AAA member survey regarding the use of various forms of electronic messaging didn’t mention wikis, but I thought
I’ve been mulling over how to respond to Mark Liberman’s recent jibe at semioticians. This jibe was provoked by my claim that linguistics should be
There are two kinds of academic conferences: those that require participants to submit their final papers, and those that don’t. Neither the
Mark Liberman is correct to state that French post-structuralist theory, is not derived from what we, today, consider to be “linguistics,” and if he
In my last post on Ward Churchill, I wrote: If Churchill did deliberately misrepresent the work of other scholars, his academic status should be
This is a review I posted for the Mac OS X citation management application Bookends. I tried to keep it short, so I didn’t even list all of the new
No need to wait for the book, the curious can download my dissertation right now: Learning “Local” Languages: Passive Revolution, Language Markets,
In his op-ed today, Krugman mentions that much of the strategy for social security “reform” was laid out in a 1983 article in the Cato Journal. What
I have not commented on the Ward Churchill controversy for one simple reason: I’ve never read his work. For those who don’t know, Churchill has
“Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America” is an exhibit at the New York Historical Society. I haven’t seen this exhibit, nor do I intend
I know it has been relatively quiet here the past few weeks. There is a simple explanation for that: I’m teaching again! This semester I’m visiting
Unfortunately, the SPAMmers have won this round. I’ve had to disable trackback entirely. Although I had already subverted trackback SPAM by
Done!!! Handed the monster in today. Micro$oft Word failed me at the very end — keeping me up till 4am dealing with crazy formatting issues. I wish
Right now I’m double checking all the Chinese text in my dissertation, so I was happy to see this post in Languagelog: Hanzi Smatter is a blog
I’m tired of listservs, but I am unfortunately unable to subscribe from many of the ones I belong to. I much prefer blogs, fourms, and wikis, each
Nathan Newman has an important post about attacks on Columbia University professors who express anti-Israeli views. Professors who have voiced
Even though I’m not yet done with my thesis (three weeks to go!) I decided to reward myself for passing my oral defense by purchasing a Panasonic
I’m off to Philadelphia to present the oral defense of my dissertation. Wish me luck. I hope I can get some sleep on the train, because I certainly
If you are an academic department conducting a faculty search: Please either include all the necessary information in the job announcement itself,
Philippe Bourgois has written a letter to the Anthropology community, asking them to boycott the Hilton Hotel in Atlanta where the AAA has moved its
How did my Ph.D. take 10 years? First of all, that is the average for a Ph.D. in Anthropology, so it is no big deal. Secondly, it doesn’t seem that
After 10 years in a Ph.D. program, I am working on completing the final draft of my dissertation — due next week, and I get this in my e-mail
From the San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom threatened Monday to join hotel workers on their picket lines today unless hotel
Being a member of the American Anthropological Association is usually fairly boring. Sure, there are your occasional controversies, such as when
Shaviro writes: I just signed the collective letter of protest being sent by university professors [and others] to The New York Times, in objection
On MacOSX you can customize the icons for just about anything. Here are the custom icons for two of the folders I use most regularly
Derrida (1930-2004) famously argued that writing preceded speech. By this I believe he meant that the “iterability” of language logically preceded
I believe in trying to give credit where credit is due. Some bloggers always put a “thanks,””via,””by way of,” etc. credit in their posts, pointing
My latest Anthropology News article, “Open Source Anthropology” is now available online as a fully editable wiki article. Please feel free to
Joi Ito just got his student I.D. card, and now he can access all those wonderful academic databases, like Lexis-Nexis. His thoughts on this are
Those of you who have gone through the hell of writing a thesis know what I’m going through right now. My oral defense is scheduled for 60 days from
Not the President, or his father, but the brother of their ancestor, Timothy Bush. I just visited the New York Public Library’s exhibit: Jewes in
My article, for Anthropology News, “Stop Yelling at the TV and Get Online!” has just been published. This is the first of a series of articles I am
Read this hilarious series of telegraphs between British colonial officials in 1916, there is a punch-line at the end, so read the whole thing. Here
I just had to share this amazing picture of a Copepod from the Smithsonian’s web site: “The World of Copepods” I discovered via Mark Liberman’s
Earlier I expressed my dismay that the Neocons were so enamored of a book entitled The Arab Mind. As a result of that post, someone brought to my
That Slavoj Žižek is a funny guy, running around making Lacanian jokes about Rumsfeld, but I have to admit he has a good point (emphasis added): In
Stanley Fish has an op-ed in the New York Times entitled “Why We Built the Ivory Tower” in which he argues that academics should stay out of
Geoffrey Pullum’s scathing letter to William Raspberry about Ebonics reminds me of how hard it was for me to teach about Ebonics to undergraduates.
I’ve had to look fairly hard for anyone else in the blogsphere who is as upset as I am about the idea that there is something we can call The Arab
There have been a couple of posts I’ve read recently referring to the Zimbardo experiment in discussing Abu Ghraib. The best one was by Rivka, who
A few days ago, Mark Liberman posted a link to this Global Security web site with information on the proper pronounciation and meaning of the prison
I enjoyed this post from John & Belle Have a Blog: I see that one W. Folsom has written a book entitled The Myth of the Robber Barons … Well, as a
Konrad Lawson, whom I’ve long known only as the person behind the Macintosh software company Fool’s Workshop, has an excellent blog, Muninn, which I
For much of history, the science of biology was the science of classification. As can be seen by the text accompanying this image (from a web page
A while a go I wrote a post asking, why can’t academic research be more like blogging? Well, I’m happy to say that I am not the only one thinking
Mahmood Mamdani is, in my mind, the most important living writer on the violence of politics and the politics of violence. In his work on
Chris Mooney (who still doesn’t have an RSS feed) has an interesting post about how Republicans have undermined important public policy initiatives
Via both BoingBoing and LanguageLog, a very disturbing story about how the Academy of Art University in San Francisco is attempting to control the
A while back I wrote about how much better academic research would be if academic publishing was more like blogging. The catch, of course, is the
It is possible to finish your dissertation and blog at the same time!!! Even more evidence of this in the comments over at Crooked Timber. Very
The March 8th issue of the New Yorker has an excellent article (by Claudia Roth Pierpont) on Franz Boas (1858-1942), the “father” of American
Reading this BBC article about Putin: I expected criticism. After all, her son had died fighting Mr Putin’s war. It was the Russian president who
Not satisfied with casting the future of international relations as the struggle between White Protestants and the rest of humankind, Samuel P.
Scott Sommers discusses some of the shortcomings of the Social Science Citation Index. I would add that the problem goes beyond the fact that the
Professor Schama is calling for a return to a “golden age” of historians of the calibre of Gibbon, Macaulay and Carlyle. He says modern-day
Preeminent Scientists Protest Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science Nobel Laureates, National Medal of Science Recipients, and Other Leading
Truth died a little today. I know it sounds trite, but how else to talk about the death of Jean Rouch, who died in a car crash in Niger at the age
In an e-mail discussion about Congress’ efforts to make funding for area studies conditional on “loyalty”, someone alerted me to a story from back
Languagehat has a post about Berlusconi’s bad grammar in Italian. He quotes from a recent New Yorker article: His grammar is dreadful. He gets the
There has been a lot of discussion of late about the Lakoff interview on how the left needs to learn how to better “frame” issues, in order to
Scholars outing rabid anti-Americanism in our own universities …. no, this isn’t the McCarthy hearings on un-American activities, it is the House
Edward Said, the world-renowned scholar, writer and critic has died aged 67, it was announced today. Here is one of the last things he published
Anyone who has lived in East Asia knows about bushiban. That’s the Mandarin word used in Taiwan for these “cram schools” which have their
Opposition to Bilingual Education is popping up again in yet another state — this time its Florida: The unfortunate reality is that it takes away
The split between the GOP and the scientific community began during the administration of Richard Nixon. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, protests
Dr. Josephine Ho, one of Taiwan’s leading researchers and political activists on issues of gender and sexuality is under attack for having linked to
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Copyright P. Kerim Friedman.