Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Conducting Ethnography In China, Leung-Sea, Lucia Siu

Prof. SIU Leung-sea, Lucia

Conducting ethnography in modern China can be highly fruitful, yet there are special-care items that seldom appear in methodology literature. Drawn from the author’s fieldwork in China’s futures markets in 2005, the first part of this paper discusses a list of practical items that ethnographers are likely to face: field access, the organizational culture of public and quasi-public institutions, obtaining trust, the scenarios of gifts and banquets, reliability of statistical data, politically sensitive areas, and personal safety.

The second part is a reflection on standpoint issues, namely Orientalism and nationalism. Ethnographers usually face tensions that arise from their roles, as …

Simply History: A Review Of Recent Thought On Ethnography, Reflexivity And Auto/Ethnography, Denice J. Szafran

Denice J Szafran, Ph.D.

Since its inception as a discipline, anthropology utilized fieldwork with methodologies of participant-observation, surveys/interviews, and archival research, to record information on cultures. Traditionally the researcher disseminated this information in the form of a monograph, theoretically framed and laden with data, aimed almost exclusively at interested parties within academe. Informants spoke to researchers, who in turn "translated" what they heard into information on the varied and various traits of that culture, conflating methodology with presentation into the concept of ethnography. The debate about how best to represent ethnographic realism as a totality of cultural experience began in the discipline several decades …

Starhawk Re/Claims A View Of The World, Denice J. Szafran

Denice J Szafran, Ph.D.

From the turmoil and turbulence of society in the United States in the mid-20th century arose many movements and groups labeled “counter-cultural.” One such group, Reclaiming Collective, allegedly began as a feminist and alternative religious venture, but through the influence and leadership of its founder, Starhawk, it has taken on the additional role of attempting to alter the society from which it sprang. Culture change is complex and has far-ranging effects. I examine the possible reasons for the birth of Reclaiming through: the theories of cultural materialism and Weberian theories on religion; apply theories of intentional community and invented tradition; …

Proceedings From Scientific Conference On Green Energy And It, Dr. Erik Dahlquist

Dr. Erik Dahlquist

This conference is part of the annual Energitinget, a national arena for energy in Sweden, with some 2500 participants. The focus with this session is to give a forum for researchers to present scientific results, and also to discuss these with other researchers. It contains papers in the area of Energy and IT as well as Green energy generally

Words Leave No Fossils: Positing The Spread Of Indo-European Languages Across Neolithic Europe, Denice J. Szafran

Denice J Szafran, Ph.D.

Various disciplines of anthropology generally accept that the Indo-European language spread throughout Europe some time after the Mesolithic era; how and when this happened is consistently debated, however. Archaeological and archaeogenetic theories on these details are wide and varied, including Gimbutas' kurgan invasions, Renfrew's peer polity, Renfrew and Bellwood's first farmers, Adams and Otte's climactic change, Robb's sociological and Cavalli-Sforza's genetic studies. Most of these give only cursory glances to linguistic theories of the methods of language diffusion and dispersal, or in the case of memetics, have attempted to combine the two divergent fields. An analysis of these theories leads …

Altered States Of Embodiment: Spirit Possession In Ethnographic And Feature Films, Kevin Taylor Anderson

Kevin Taylor Anderson

Possession and other forms of altered states of embodiment are represented in both feature and ethnographic films, yet result in divergent illustrations. Ethnographic films dealing with possession (a la Rouch, Deren, Adair, Asch) suggest that it is a therapeutic phenomenon, often framed as a means of resistance to dominant socio-political forces. Yet, in feature films the possessed body is rendered as a passive recipient of diabolical forces. In the former case, possession signals empowerment, in the latter disempowerment. In addition to its portrayal as a form of resistance, religious supplicants in such ethnographic films as Rouch’s Les Maitre Fous and …

The International Smuggling Of Children, Greta Uehling

Greta Uehling

Each year, over 100,000 children are apprehended entering the United States unaccompanied by parents or legal guardians, and without valid immigration documents. As many as 8,000 of these children are placed in an elaborate system of border patrol detention centers, shelter facilities, and courts. While the Department of Health and Human Services (through the Office of Refugee Resettlement) funds programs that care for the undocumented immigrants, the Department of Justice, (through the Department of Homeland Security) sweeps up and deports the very same children (or their parents). Apprehended children therefore bring to light the competing agendas of security and humanitarianism. …

De Paradojas Y Neocons, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.

Political Liberalism And Public Reason, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

The paper explores John Rawls´s idea of public reason, as reflected in Political Liberalism and The Idea of Public Reason Revisited. In Rawls’s later works, public reason acquires fundamental significance as a criterion by which the principles to be assumed from the outset in a theory of political justice may be determined. The starting-point for Rawls´s theory -the idea of citizens as free and equal reveals- that this abstraction falls short of an authentic conception of human beings as social by nature. A brief study of key issues concerning marriage and the family shows the difficulties that underlie this question. …

The Practical Value Of Natural Law Theory In The Work Of St Thomas Aquinas, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.

Of Reverie And Emplacement: Spatial Imaginings And Tourism Encounters In Nepal Himalaya, Francis Khek Gee Lim

Francis Khek Gee Lim

No abstract provided.

Reclaiming The Concept Of Culture: A Review Of Recent Thoughts On Cultural Invention And Cultural Change, Denice J. Szafran

Denice J Szafran, Ph.D.

Defining culture as the capacity for humans to symbolically classify, codify, and communicate their common experiences, Boas' "genius of a people" (Bunzl 2004), has yielded to popular understandings of culture as a bounded entity that exists discretely in the world. These latter notions are constructs arising from the imposition of Western cultural notions on examined societies. The concept of culture, once the exclusive tool of anthropological investigations and explanations, finds itself arrogated by "everybody everywhere," facing devaluation of its meaning and rendering it ineffective as an analytical tool, (Marcus 2008) yet reclaiming the more nebulous meanings of the term culture …

Use Of Modeling And Simulation In Pulp And, Dr. Erik Dahlquist

Dr. Erik Dahlquist

The book is a handbook for operators and process engineers in primarily pulp and paper industry, but also other process industries about how to utilise simulation as a tool for enhanced process operations. The book has been written as part of a EU COST action on Process Simulation, with 14 countries and 50 researchers and process industry representatives involved.

China- Tibet Conflict, Allen Gnanam

Allen Gnanam

China- Tibet tensions are continually growing, as Tibetans are protesting for total independence from China, despite condemnation from their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who is only seeking a sense of autonomy for Tibet (Sinder, 2008). As Tibetan protests are becoming violent and aggressive, the Dalai Lama has also threatened to resign as Tibet’s government in exile (Sinder, 2008), however, his rhetoric is not being exposed to the Tibetan people, due to government censorship in China. Therefore the Dalai Lama, an exiled institutional entrepreneur, has to find new methods that will enable his influential message, to be received by the …