Anthropo Logic

A. L. J.

2008-09-12T22:29:00.003+02:00

This is an announcement of my A. L. J., the Anthropo Logic Journals at anthlogjour.info, to participate in writing send your social and cultural anthropology related article by registering.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

sybilamber.com

2008-05-04T17:28:00.002+02:00

This site is continued under http://www.sybilamber.com/ .

Kind regards from Vienna, greetings sent out to the whole world!

Billie

Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents

2007-12-02T22:54:00.000+01:00

This is an important chapter relating to the internet. Please read the handbook provided by the Reporters Sans Frontieres under this link: http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542. Julien Pain is the head of the Internet Freedom desk at this organisation, he writes,

Bloggers need to be ananonymous when they are putting out information that risks their safety. The cyber-police are watching and have become expert at tracking down "trouble-makers". [...] This advice is of course not for those (terrorists, racketeers or pedophiles), who use the internet to commit crimes. The handbook is ismply to help bloggers encountering opposition because of what they write to maintain their freedom of expression."

In the handbook follows a list of blog tools and platforms, some hints to promote a blog and a report about internet censorship. Reporters Sans Frontiers offer a blog service here.

Respect and perception for Luca and all children in this world

2007-11-26T14:23:00.001+01:00

A grinning minister in a round table broadcasting. Photos of a violated baby. Officers and doctors, who lack the ability to judge. This is Austria. This is, what they call care. It is what they do to human beings, who were violated. I am deeply concerned with the fact, that Human Rights are disregarded in Austria.

I feel despise, contempt and scorn for people, who cannot even protect a baby from violence and abuse. By eyesight I would have been able to decide, that this little child must have been kept in custody.

And, I would have done it. No matter which aftereffects. I do not need to be a heroine to act like a human being would.

References

1 http://www.kurier.at/nachrichten/niederoesterreich/122836.php

2 http://www.diepresse.com/home/panorama/oesterreich/341876/index.do

3 http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=3107716

Amazing

2007-11-19T17:24:00.000+01:00

This Joomla! software is amazingly flexible and simple. I like the environment to handle new installations easily. I read an article about CMS systems, recently, and I was glad I chose Joomla!, Typo3 would have been too much for a starter. I am still searching for extensions and plugins. However, I acquired my licence some weeks ago and now I am a licenced vendor of my artwork. My shop is down for maintenance these days and I learn how to handle PHP, which seems to be a cool scripting language to a more secure web.

The open source software

2007-11-14T21:55:00.001+01:00

It is as it always was: I dislike the open source software. It works for a time and due to change of password, functions and pages do not work as they should. It was ok for me with some time, as long as I did not really need it and I did not want to build a life on it. Now, well, I should have known before, I changed my password and simple functions refuse to work like the shopping cart. I already prepared the badge with I-love-my-host on it, well, nada, niente, nothing. I cannot even change passwords without loosing my installations and implementations of a month. I have to remake all the work. Yes, of course I backed up, but all the edits again? Thousands of files? They promised a complete software package and I end up spending my day with editing, because the stuff has to be installed new.

I simply do not have a thousand euros for buying a shop software ... I keep on tuning.

OekoNews

2007-11-13T16:24:00.000+01:00

I would like to promote this webiste via a post: http://www.oeko-news.com promotes news about economy in German. Various kinds of energy and saving it are described and documented.
I wanted to add some thoughts to my Inner Senses:
Of course, all human senses are "within". With Inner Senses I mean the part of anticipation, that is not visible in a physical body. My "inner eyes" or "inner ears" are an imagination to capture what is there. It is called synaesthesia, when feelings are connected with other sensations. This connection and communications happens haphazardly in content and with me, all the time, when I am not under pressure of stress, rush or other emotional tensions. Synaesthesia is not an illness or disability, but is in contrary an ability to connect thoughts and impressions, pictures and music, however. Famous examples are the painters Kandinsky, with his most beautiful abstracts, or Joan Miro, as much as I know:

Picture Wikepedia: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

My inner senses

2007-11-12T20:46:00.001+01:00

I can "see" the pictures I want to paint, they are ready in my mind. Sometimes parts of them are ready and I adapt these parts to make a whole. Sketches of parts may be seen here, in my ThruOut The World blog. I only sketch what I want to remember, the theme, but not the colors. The colors come by themselves, practically in my dreams. I learned how to make these vision stay in my brain, aka remember. It took me years to acquire the ability to direct my dreams into a direction I wanted to explore, or not. I let dreams go, when I think, I should learn something about my subconscious. So the idea came up, I would want to paint my daddy in a very old manner, like Van Eyck did or the other painters from the Netherlands. I mean the technique, here. Then the picture changed: I will rather express what I feel about my dad and put a solid color construction under it. I do not really want to paint daddy in a naturalistic way, because there are many photos, videos and audio files available. What makes the picture essentially focussed on expression is what I understand from the movements of feelings and thoughts I have. The love, the thankfulness, the sorrow and grief.

Since I wrote about my inner eye, I would like to add my inner ear, too: These days and with an 8-track computer program, it is possible for me to materialize what I hear with my inner ear. This is how I composed the Song for John Lennon in October 2005. For his birthday, to thank the world and vibes and molecules never ending (and therefore have no beginning and end). It takes me some days to finish a song. Well, I thought this short text might help somebody´s inspiration. I will come up with another blog post about inspiration.

Finally, the blog is up again

2007-11-12T19:14:00.001+01:00

I finished my maintenance work and I revised some code for the Anthropo Logic Diary. I changed the sidebar from right to left, it looks more like a newspaper, now. Simple. I would like to learn how to install some fine, black lines. This is what I intended. I keep working on my website and shop, I paint. I started to sketch my daddy playing music, I was watching the videos I found, over and over. Our dad died 29 years ago. I want to express the feelings I still have (after so many years) for my daddy in an oil painting: I thought this was the perfect way to do this. I did paint in oil, earlier, but I re-read the chapters about building an oil on canvas. It will be a Jazz painting, like I saw them, when I was a child. I had the canvas standing freely for a couple of months, now, to test it: It is a pre-manufactured white canvas. I sketch what can "see" in my brains with my "inner eyes", I do this on the canvas with ochre. No limits, no programs, just Jazz, feelings, color and me. I will present it in my gallery, I hope to be ready by spring or early summer.

Winter time has come and I rarely need to go the bureau. Instead of this I occupy myself with tricking out the shop software and adding lots of contributions. I added an Amazon media store but yesterday, it is here and I was able to integrate it into the php-files. Of course I zipped it and added it to the contributions site at osCommerce.

1-7

2007-11-06T09:07:00.000+01:00

Points one to seven worked through: http://20stickyposts.blogspot.com/2006/07/low-sidebar.html. This blog has a lot of tips for blog writers, I will keep writing about this here, perhaps it helps somebody else...Read this article and go through the clicking on each post to see where the sidebar would be down. With me here it was a single wrong closing tag, which should have been < slash div> and was < slash a>. That caused all the problems...

Luckly I saved all codes, I will get the blog up and running in two days again...Enjoy reading!

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Support?

2007-11-06T08:43:00.001+01:00

Now I removed my sidebar completely, plus I drafted post with graphics in them. There are two dotted lines on bottom of the page here, no matter which post is the lowest.

Maintenance

2007-11-06T08:25:00.001+01:00

The site is undergoing heavy maintenance: Although I changed the template and cancelled each code, that could have caused the sidebar down - it is actually now in the footer of the website - the sidebar does not appear where it should. The post by themselves are ok and not too broad, I chose the Minima Stretch Style, I have to go through them... Thanks to my readers and your patience, I hope I can fix the problem, soon.

Short notice

2007-11-03T21:38:00.001+01:00

My sidebars is down, I do not know why yet... This is only a short notice to let you know, that though I did not change my template and having been away for some days, my blog here does not appear like it should to and used to do. I will try and fix the problem tomorrow, the HTML goes only for 90%.

Dresden

2007-11-03T21:17:00.001+01:00

Recently I found this work online, it is written by Martin Roessler. The EPaper gives a historical overview of Ethnology in the german-speaking countries. He means on page 20, that Ethnology and the NSRegime were subject to reciprocation, but he states, that political influences were stronger on the science, than the other way round. Except that the NSRegime was interested in colonial affairs, ethnologists during WWII pronounced racist stands and the hierarchical order of peoples from the view of an extreme nationalism. Some people in Dresden were Otto Reche´s alumni, notably one Michael Hesch, who wrote a Festschrift for Reche 1939 and who became the director of the Museums of Ethnology and Zoology in 1941. He was a member of the NSParty since 1933 and it seems, that his friendship with Reche was of great help for him, because his NSCareer was furthered in the years after 1941. He had been responsible for erbbiologische Abstammungsgutachten and later moved to Vienna, where he was a member of the Anthropological Society. He not only was scientifically influential during WWII, he also acquired certain ranks in the uniformed NSMilitia, namely one SSRank called Hauptsturmfuehrer. Sadly enough, the Museum of Ethnology´s website has only two or three sentences left for the time of WWII in Dresden.

I discovered ...

2007-10-28T18:04:00.000+01:00

... some old tapes! They show the Barrelhouse Jazzband of the 60ies in Vienna. Not suffice to say, they are great. This is the kind of music I like to hear. I like the interpretation and improvisation of Jazz songs composed, for instance, by Count Basie. I still start to cry, when I hear Lonesome World and my daddy´s horn. The interview preceding Lonesome World and I Got Rythm show Guenther Schifter asking first Horstl Bichler, then Otti Kitzler, Franz Bilik and Peter Hoffmann. Schifter tries to get out the most of them, well, musicians are people, who prefer to communicate in sounds. Courtesy of ORF Austria I added, but left everthing else unedited. However, the music is the message. The tapes I found must have been our mum´s, I copied them to DVD. These tapes are of Jazz historical value, I think.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

G600´s new technology

2007-10-28T17:34:00.000+01:00

This cellular phone takes shots with a five megapixel camera, see some examples here: Vote for Queue Jumpers with The Samsung G600 5 Mega Pixel Camera Phone! The G600 is a lightweight digital bluetooth device offering Pict Bridge printing. An attached LED Flash and image stabilizer guarantee your photos in art book quality. Integrated players for music and videos serve an additonal internet browser, plus FM Radio. The whole thing in a size of 102 x 47,8 x 14,9 mm and a stand by time of up to 300 hours. Winners of the Queue Jumper Gallery will be awarded a modelbook and photoshoot with one of Europe´s leading model agencies.

I get used to ...

2007-10-22T22:33:00.000+02:00

... the Open Source software. I learn php-scripting and today I managed to configure some files on MySQL server. Anyway, the Open Journal Software does not yet work, I could not define the ReadMe properly. I enrolled to participate in the support forums, to install my journal. I implemented a cms system to my commercial site, some hours went by until I realized I have to place a line of code rather above the other definition rows. Tomorrow, I will design some banners and buttons, plus merge my gallery with the osCommerce software: Many useres have stored their contributions and updated them. I browsed thousands of them, recently, although I did not find a template I liked. I will change colors and the frontpage text and - sufficiently in html. For now. I will write about how to deploy php-files, properly, I find the documentations quite confusing for beginners.

Michelangelo

2007-10-16T20:27:00.001+02:00

Today I saw a card: It is God creating Adam, whereas Adam stands for the human beings. Michelangelo Buonarotti was mentioned by Kurt Ingerl, when he told about his approach of creating monuments. He used the acronym BIK, which meant Buonarotti-Ingerl-Kolig, whereas Kolig was Kurt´s teacher. Kurt died some years ago, much too early, and nowadays I watch his huge facade near the place I live opposite the Vienna Stadthalle, where it decorates the Electric Energy Services house. It must have tons and it is computer design dating back to the early 70ies.

Dresden

2007-10-16T17:11:00.001+02:00

A group to find out more about the Dresden Museum of Ethnology and Institute was formed during the first part of the seminar concerning the german-speaking regions during WWII. The Dresden Museum keeps an old collection since 1560, which was found by Kurfuerst August of Sachsen. The Inventarien describe these collections furthered by the King of Poland, who was August the Strong since 1794. Adolf B. Meyer founded the ethnographical department 1875, to be a part of the Museum of Natural History. Meyer had close contact with Rudolf Virchow and Adolf Bastian, two scientists important for the german-speaking countries. Remember Adolf Bastian and his work with Francis Boas, who later moved to North America. During WWII Dresden was destroyed, but luckily most of the museum collections were saved in time. As early as 1946 the anthropological collection arrived in the Museum.

Here is an excerpt of the time table, the time in question is only touched with some sentences on the website http://www.voelkerkunde-dresden.de/site.php?g=geschichte&css=fc (2007-10-16 04:58 PM):

1940 - 1945
Auslagerung von Archivunterlagen und Sammlungen. Vernichtung eines Teils der in Ausstellungen verbliebenen Großobjekte während der Bombardierung Dresdens.

1945/46/47
Nach Beendigung des II. Weltkrieges Trennung der Museen für Tierkunde und Völkerkunde. Das Museum für Völkerkunde wird der Hauptverwaltung der Staatlichen Museen, Schlösser und Gärten im Lande Sachsen unterstellt.

This Museum of Ethnology has a Wikipedia article here http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_f%C3%BCr_V%C3%B6lkerkunde_Dresden (2007-10-16 05:00 PM), where the same contents, as above mentioned, are repeated. Here is a list of Departments in Germany http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/ethno/links.html#2 (2007-16-10 05:06 PM), this already of big help for students in the seminar held by Professor Gingrich at the University´s Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology.

Technorati Tags: german-speaking, anthropology, ethnology

del.icio.us Tags: german-speaking, anthropology, ethnology

The German-Speaking Countries

2007-10-15T16:22:00.001+02:00

Gingrich, Andre (2005) The German-Speaking Countries. Ruptures, Schools, and Nontraditions: Reassessing the History of Sociocultural Anthropology in German, In: Barth/Gingrich/Parkin/Silverman, Sydel (2005) One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology. Chicago: Chicago University Press, PP. 61 - 153

Contents

1 Prelude and Overture: From Early Travelogues to German Enlightenment

2 From the Nationalist Birth of Volkskunde to the Establishment of Academic Diffusionism: Branching Off from the International Mainstream

3 From the Late Imperial Era to the End of the Republican Interlude: Creative Subaltern Tendencies, Larger and Smaller Schools of Anthropology

4 German Anthropology during the Nazi Period: Complex Scenarios of Collaboration, Persecution and Competition

5 Anthropology in Four German-Speaking Countries: Key Elements of Post-World War II Developments to 1989

The following text is an excerpt and overview of the first part in the first chapter to explain critique and research approach.

Ad 1) After George Stocking, the presentist approach to Anthropology nowadays implies criticist and internationally oriented positions. Professor Gingrich uses nontraditions "to refer, on the one hand, to dispersed, hidden, and half-forgotten treasures with little continuity and, on the other, to certain schools with a lot of continuity that, however, do not represent any positive tradition today" (Gingrich 2005: 61). The basic implications of a presentist stand are:

Historical traditions that had consequences for sociocultural anthropology as perceived today in an internationally valid sense
The international, transnational and global dimensions of today´s anthropological discourses and debates
The linguistic and temporal limits of examining the historical record of anthropology in German.

There are three critical consequences of the critical insterest of Professor Gingrich´s approach outlined

The explicit embracing of the broad set of values to share, which are secular democracy and humanism. This would necessitate precise ideological criticism and careful, distantiated evaluation
The reassessment of hegemonic traditions of the past with relatively little interantional relevance. Peripheral and subaltern traditions never received local recognition and they appear much more interesting now, than what was respected and taught then.
A new consideration of the extremely hierarchical nature of academic institutions in the German-speaking countries, "these hierarchical academic positions answered to wider political interests much more explicitely than academic positions elsewhere" (Gingrich 2005: 63).

This part of the book concerning the German-speaking countries goes on with subchapters titled The German Enlightenment, Enlightenment Explorers, Language Studies and First Concepts, Limited Consequences.

del.icio.us Tags: anthropology, histroy

Technorati Tags: anthropology, theory, history

This somebody on screen I know

2007-10-14T19:21:00.001+02:00

A colleague from the University inspired this post, perhaps it is useful to my readers. I first will post my comment on Andrea´s post:

Dear Andrea, it is not strange: People on video or TV or on a stage are like you and - well - me. Just ask yourself: Did you have this feeling, when you met me? No, you didn´t, because you did not know I was on TV, on stage or in videos. It makes no difference, most likely. It will happen to you more and more, because videos on YouTube and the like will be a standard in the future. Do you have this feeling, when you meet somebody, who has a website? Probably, no. And this is only a broadcast, too. See? You ARE one of the broadcasting people, too! It doesn´t even adhere to money or richness or reputation: It is nothing, when you are not payed for your work, I tell you. It is a job like every job else. ... Kind regards, Sybil

In fact it is so, that all those stories are not true. Whatever story, one might think, "Well, she was an actor and she was on TV" or "She has recorded two LPs"; I take these examples from my experience. I do not know what is strange by "seeing" somebody on the screen, you know. I am used to people, who treat me differently, because in a moment they know this or that, let me say, "I know your dad, he was a talented musician". The point is, that it makes no difference, to perform means to work. It is a job like every job else. It is not even better paid.

My motto always was, "Be famous and rich, not a bitch", this is a line of a song text performed by Hannes and my brother, and their band. Just strat your acting course or perform with your band and try to think, "What you see is what you get". This is what I did. People would destroy you, if you were all open and what they would call great. Hundreds and thousands of people attempted to perform, if this is the magic ... I was in Hollywood, because I believed in me and what I did, and you know something? The best police in the world, the officers of the LAPD Hollywood did to help me out! You know, Andrea, everybody is a little human being in this world, a menshlyne, somehow. Do you think it is a kind of courage you assume yourself to have a lack of? Do you adore creativity, somehow? Andrea and all other readers, be it as it may, you have your life and you are your own boss ... this is what I wanted to add. Have questions, go here to the forum, I will answer as good as I can.

Announcement of Domain

2007-10-14T16:59:00.001+02:00

I would like to announce my domain, today: Finally, I got one! It is called sybilamber.com, because I would want to use it for commercial purposes. My start page is not yet the one I wanted, I have to get used to SQL with PHP and several Open Source software. I still "fight" with some installations and files, plus I have to learn how to get prospective consumers for my shop interested. I setup a forum and a gallery, recently. I learn embedding *.php - files and I try to setup the OJS software. Anyway, it does not work. Does somebody out there have an *.sql - file to configure the database on MySQL? I found a wiki called VAnthropology, which stands for Virtual Anthropology in the widest sense. I appreciate your guestbook entry or discussion ... I will design some banners and buttons, as well. I hope you like my site and work.

Seminar

2007-10-14T16:39:00.001+02:00

University seminars and lectures started again. I will enjoy a seminar concerning the "german-speaking" institutes during WWII, to which I was admitted for. It is a blocked seminar, so attending is easily manageable. An overview of the history in Social and Cultural Anthropology I not only gained during lectures, but also in a previous seminar work group concerning students of the Vienna Institute. Here is a list of my work and collected links or texts relating to the previous seminar:

Ia: Korrespondenz
Ib: 1956
Ic: 1953
Id: Schebesta
Ie: Einleitung
If: DJW
Ig: Fragebogen
Ih: DOeW Literatur
Ii: Universitaetsarchiv
Ij: Einladung
Ik: Wiesbauer- Hohenwart
Il: OeAW
Im:Jagellonen University Archives
In: Wiener Messe
Io: Zeitzeugen Dr. Gingrich
Ip: Sulzmann
Iq: Lexikon Klee
Ir: Hampl
Is: Henninger, Krampflitschek, Mylius, Schweeger- Hefel
It: Center fo Military History
Iu: Ariadne
Iv: Wiesenthal Center
Iw: Gall
Ix: List
Iy: Dr. Portisch
Iz: Personenstand
Iaa: Institutsarchiv
Iba: Aspekte
Ica: Boker Tov
Ida: Schreibweisen Pluegel
InterviewMeeting: 1, 2
Universitaetsarchiv Wien: 1, 2, 3, 4

Context XXI
Goldstern
Muehlfried: R. Bleichsteiner
Rabinovici, Doron: Instanzen der Ohnmacht
Shoa. De
Shoa Foundation
Warum?

I hope I can complete my work, soon. I got lots to do, a. to prepare the new semster, b. for the tourism bureau and c. to prepare my ceramics shop. I will have to acquire a licence to run the online business, because I have to make a living.

Let´s have some fun tonight

2007-10-14T16:14:00.000+02:00

(Ev´rything´s all right) This would make a nice button for Culture Contact phrasing:

This is just fun. No more, no less. When somebody ever said Culture Contact I "saw" these two fingers, it is God I suppose and Adam, ... well, the Adam is the Mensch, the Human Being, in Ivrith. It is, of course, a westernized interpretation ... why should all the world accept Buonarotti´s pictures as their symbol for a process in mind?

And the chase is hotly followed

2007-10-07T19:24:00.001+02:00

Arigona is fighting for her right. She is under age and fled from - the Austrian governmental minister Platter. She sent a video, which was broadcasted in the ORF. Well, in the sense of Genf contracts, she might not be a "refugee", for whatever reason. To me this is not the crux of matter: The matter is, that the familiy lived and worked in Austria for five years approximately and this fact alone would make them eligible for citizenship - in other countries. Arigona is a young woman in adolescence, she feels desperate. She said so. She uttered, she would commit suicide and she felt forlorn in a hopeless situation. I can understand her and I know, that she is only 15 years old and left outside alone.

This is not extortion, as many think. This is a case to show lenience, brotherhood and sisterhood, and humanity towards Arigona and her family. Additionally, I would consider the Human Rights Declaration in these respects, http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html:

Article 10.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 16.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

I am not familiar with the processes, that led to the order for uniformed officers to deport this family in the middle of the night after the family has lived and worked in Austria for some years, already. Which kind of persecution did they suffer from? Did they want to change their nationality?

Questions over questions and the right to choose residence is not even touched, yet ... oh yeah, and the brotherhood and sisterhood of men ... imagine ...all the people living life in peace ...

Technorati Tags: humanrights, arigona

del.icio.us Tags: humanrights, arigona

Kunstasyl: Art and Asyl in Not

2007-10-05T15:25:00.001+02:00

This very sympathetic group called Asyl in Not offers the opportunity to acquire objects of art and support refugees and migrants at the same time: KunstAsyl will take place in Vienna October 24, 2007. More than 90 Austrian artists offer more than 100 works of art to support Asyl in Not´s work by offering this catalog of art objects. Asyl in Not is an organsiation to support asylum seeker in Austria, over and over. Many families, although they lived and worked in Austria for five or more years, were exposed to ministerial officers, who repetitively dumped them. Local politicians and communities in contrary helped these mainly poor people, whose families were detached in the middle of the night without warnings. Children cannot even speak the language of the countries they were deported to ... mothers do not know about their under age children ... the minister himself uttered in a local news broadcast, that the officers "were only practising Austrian laws". The minister is of the same political party, namely OeVP, that cooperate(d) with the right-wing FPOe in parliament. Two thirds of the uniformed officers in this country vote for the FPOe, as much as I know.

Please forward this message and support Human Rights for grown-ups and Children´s Rights. Please forward to people, who can afford these pictures! http://www.kunstasyl.at If you cannot be there, please write a letter about your will to buy to Director Otto Hans Ressler at Im Kinsky Kunst Auktionen, the address is Freyung 4, 1010 Vienna, Austria, Europe. Fax #: 0043153242009. Thank you!

What:	Kunstasyl Art Auction: Austrian Artists donate their works of art to support the organisation Asyl in Not
When:	Mittwoch, Oktober 24, 2007 3:00
Where:	Semperdepot Lehargasse 6 Vienna, Vienna 1060 Austria

del.icio.us Tags: art, auction, asylum, humanrights, children

Technorati Tags: art, auction, asylum, children, humanrights

Okto: AnthrOkto?

2007-10-05T13:59:00.001+02:00

Some weeks ago I attended lectures at Okto. Two colleagues of Social and Cultural Anthropology studies were there, too. We had a little talk about Ethnowelle, afterwards. The lecture held by Mr. Jungwirt focused on various forms of the application of rights in the media. Since I plan to start my own media projects in the near future - I got to make a living and pay my bills - I began to read about copyrights and more applied laws relating to visual media and boradcasting. We discussed some quite interesting points of publishing, i. e. YouTube content and copyright laws, or the causes of difference in European and U. S. laws, as for intellectual property rights. I plan to attend more lectures to start my program.

Technorati Tags: tv, medianthropology, radio

del.icio.us Tags: tv, medianthropology, media, radio

Amnesty Int´l

2007-10-04T21:01:00.000+02:00

I think about starting a local Amnesty group. I read this report on Execution and I think health personnel should not participate in executions. If you think similarly, please sign the Lethal Injection Petition. It needs quite some weeks until a group can work effectively, so it seems always too late. If you want to take action for human rights and you are located in Vienna, Austria, please contact me. I would like to focus on work for children. I will dedicate a part of my new domain to Human Rights, perhaps start a Verein and give some leisure to humanitarian work.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

FQS: Virtual Ethnography

2007-09-30T16:17:00.001+02:00

The Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung released a new edition covering Virtual Ethnography in September. Complete texts are provided in English, German and Spanish. What is Virtual Ethnography?

The label "virtual ethnography" includes a broad range of methodological approaches aimed at answering the complexities of the object of research and the different ways in which this object has been constructed. Virtual ethnographers, ethnographers of the Internet or of cyberspace are faced with the need to answer very pressing questions such as how to use heterogeneous data (text, audiovisual data, etc.) in their analysis, or how to combine research in front of the screen and in the virtual field. (1 Beaulieu/Dominguez/Estalella/Gomez/Read/Schnettler 2007)

There is a chapter about Cyberethnography, whereas ethnography is "a written represenation of culture":

Cyberculture is a prolific area of research, and ethnography occupies a central position in studying cybercultures (BELL, 2001). In brief, ethnography is "a written representation of culture" (MAANEN, 1988). It strives to create descriptions of individual or collective subjectivities for the purpose of understanding different cultures. (2 Gajjala/Rybas 2007)

The authors develop ethnographic methods to investigate the internet by basing their research on the epistemologies of doing. In the conclusion they call for a "process-oriented multi-modal cyberethnographic engagement".

Several reviews and conference reports consummate the edition. All texts are available via *.pdf - download, publications date back to the year 2000.

____________________________________________________________

1 Domínguez, Daniel; Beaulieu, Anne; Estalella, Adolfo; Gómez, Edgar; Schnettler, Bernt & Read, Rosie (2007) Virtual Ethnography. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(3), http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-07/07-3-E1-e.htm

2 Rybas, Natalia & Gajjala, Radhika (2007). Developing Cyberethnographic Research Methods for Understanding Digitally Mediated Identities [33 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(3), Art. 35, http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-07/07-3-35-e.htm

del.icio.us Tags: cyberspace, ethnography, ethnology, anthropology

Technorati Tags: cyberspace, cyberself, ethnology, ethnography, anthropology, culture

Frankenberg

2007-09-29T17:14:00.001+02:00

In the night police transported a part of a family, I would rather say deported, from Frankenburg, Upper Austria. The ORF had it in the news headlines, that uniformed police officers pushed off some family members in the middle of the night. My first thought on DDR - STASI methods was confirmed, when I heard that Mr. Wolf stated, that another part of the family having stayed in Austria for five years already, was send to Kosovo some hours before that. One young girl disappeared, because she fled in time. Mr. Wolf said laconically, that the ORF has information about more chartered flights to Kosovo. Mr. Truebwasser of the Green Party speaks about a scandal, the Green party has started a petition campagne, recently.

Virtual assistance in studies

2007-09-29T16:22:00.001+02:00

The Academic Commons recently published the news about Top 100 Learning Tools including a link to the commented list, here it is: http://www.academiccommons.org/weblink/goto/175. The Commons ask for new technologies in learning, how they can be used and what effect they have. Library browsing enables search for topics and keywords or tags. Learning professionals were asked to name their favorite learning tools, The Learning Toolbox lists them by category. Most of the listed programs are either free for private use, or cost little to use for commercial purposes. I save much time using a desktop search engine, it indexes my science folders. My top tools supporting work are:

Personal Tools	Research & Producer Tools
RSSOwl LinkedIn Del.icio.us IE 7 Mozilla Firefox Outlook 2003 & Business Manager Adobe Reader Yahoo! Mail Google Maps LingoPad CeltX PowerArchiver hijackthis TV-Browser TweakNow RegCleaner Std Gmail FileZilla ZoneAlarm AVG Anti-Virus Live One Scan Jap LG PC Suite	Copernicus Basic AnthroTech Amazon Google Scholar Citavi Word 2003 Access 2003 Power Point 2003 Publisher 2003 PDF Creator Blogger LiveJournal MyBlogLog BlogCatalog AVS Media Suite Paint.Net LiveWriter Animake YouTube Slideshare Picasa Yahoo! Groups Google Groups Olympus Voice Album

del.icio.us Tags: tools, software

Technorati Tags: tools, software

PPP challenges the future

2007-09-29T15:13:00.000+02:00

I heard about PayPerPost, when I surfed random blogs. To be exact, I found the promotion button on the me blog by a blue eyed girl. I was so impressed, that I decided to grab the opportunity, which would be excellently working for me, immediately. I study and I learn how to write in a variety of formats, for instance essays in scientific text production, seminar papers or even books. My teacher said, “Write every day, have a diary, keep a journal of what you do.” Off I went and started to blog about relevant topics related to Social and Cultural Anthropology on a regular basis. I comment on a student´s life and times full of advice, news and references to share them.

I appreciate the PayPerPost style, which is informative, down-to-earth and straightforward. I was pleased by the chance to write about the things I love and to pay my bills at the same time. PayPerPost is a lively community, full of news and mirroring the democratic intention of the internet given by the team´s guidelines. I was convinced of the friendly marketing and clear performance, instantly. I learned how to register for blogrings and how to promote my work, because of PPP´s suggestions how to list my blogs and expose my posts. I made a lot of friends in only one week´s time and not only posties! This is a business concept to shape the future and it has blog ethics – bring in yourself, your thoughts and unique creativity – take the challenge at PayPerPost.

Tasing

2007-09-28T17:58:00.001+02:00

Two days ago there was a new ticker on TV: They showed what tasers are and the abuse by police, on air. TP has an article in German and here the Taser webiste with categories in consumer, law enforcement and military. A taser is an apparatus, that fires arrows with barbed hooks on electric strings into a human being´s body. The electric power has a voltage of 50 000, as reported in ZiB, recently. Hakuryuu wrote about "Don´t Tase Me!" in The Journey of an APELC Student. There are some videos on YouTube about some cases of police violence.

It seems we are back in times of legalized torture:

1 Over here they said the voltage would count at 50.000, as much as I remember. However, voltage of any kind affects the rythm of the heart. When an electric current diverts heartbeats, permanent damage of the heart is - most - likely.
2 Those arrows have barbed hooks: These things are not even used for animals, anymore. In contrary, they were cancelled, because of cruelty.
3 Did you already hear, that 80% percent of the Western Society cannot be called healthy - and therefore "taser resistent"? Not everybody is sporting daily or thrice a week, depressions are called a quite common illness (don´t know the exact term in English) and all these people have to take medication. Let me say it the other way round: Do you know people, who are "top fit" and take no medications in the average population?

Technorati Tags: taser, humanrights

del.icio.us Tags: taser, humanrights

Urban Dictionary

2007-09-28T17:38:00.001+02:00

I found this Urban Dictionary, online. Every day, there are new definitions online, go watch the alphabetic list for September 28. The idea behind the service to be obtained via RSS, phone, web or API/program, is to build a slang dictionary by users. This is a very interesting thing from the anthropological view, because words are given an explanation and example. Plus, all the word creations are explained from an emic view, which means in this context: People, who are speakers of the English language, bring in their vocabulary of daily routine. For an overview what Linguistic Anthropology is, please read the Wikipedia article with a list of references. Directly related to Social and Cultural Anthropology is Ferdinand De Saussure, who supplied anthropologists with a model of language: Langage, langue and parole are the criteria for the theory of language as a set of symbols. This classification influenced Structuralism, whose most prominent Claude Lévi-Strauss provided for anthropology the binary pairs and triangles of relationship. Examples for binary pairs are: wet - dry, hot - cold, hungry - full, poor - rich.

del.icio.us Tags: language, anthropology, ethnology, urban

Technorati Tags: language, anthropology, ethnology, urban

Quote of the Day:
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. - Herman Melville

Bingo! Pingo!

2007-09-28T13:52:00.000+02:00

Pingo´s phone card international is a virtual prepaid calling card. Forget about hundreds of Euro- or Dollar- bills in your mailbox after holidays. Did you ever call your friend in vacation, when shopping or dining out? I did. My prepaid calling card was freshly loaded while shopping in Trieste, Italy. I could not find my partner in life and my Italian was too weak to explain, what I wanted from the bag I wished to buy. I called him, I was talking for some minutes and - you name it - my prepaid balance was gone. I realized, because my service´s friendly operator voice reminded me, "You have to top up your credits. Find a retail partner by dialing our service partners in Italy, please." Well, this was before the new laws published were applicable in Europe this year and how could I dial without having had credits? Average rates are high using a mobile for long-distance calls, still.

Pingo offers prepaid calling cards and Global Phone Cards without hidden or other additional charges and fees. Pingo RateWatcher controls your international calls for as low as 1,8 cents a minute. Here is your special phone card blog discount coupon: With the code “ppp3” readers of this blog get a 3$ savings coupon, if they sign up from this post. Based on the iBasis network´s state-of-the-art technology, Pingo cooperates with industry leaders like Cisco Systems. This is the reason why cost-saving calls in over 30 countries are available. Simply register with Pingo to make a call, dial the local toll-free access number and enter your details. Then dial the country code, area code and a given number - your connection is established in clear and reliable quality. Bingo - prepaid calling cards by Pingo!

Written by Sybil Amber for Pingo 2007: PayPerPost

A Scientific Theory Of Culture

2007-09-27T20:59:00.001+02:00

Malinowski´s language is quite antiquated. He uses terms like "primitve men", a phrasing not used in anthropology, anymore. The volume is easy to read and very interesting, Malinowski refers to many early anthropologists, like Lewis H. Morgan or James G. Frazer. He explains his view of science thoroughly and concedes a kind of scientific spirit to early human beings. Here are the contents for you:

Contents

Preface (Huntington Cairns)

A Scientific Theory of Culture

I. Culture as the Subject of Scientific Investigation

II. A Minimum Definition of Science for the Humanist

III. Concepts and Methods of Anthropology

IV. What is Culture?

V. Theory of Organized Behaviour

VI. The Concrete Isolates of Organized Behavior

VII. The Functional Analysis of Culture

VIII. What is Human Nature?

IX. The Derivation of Cultural Needs

X. Basic Needs and Cultural Responses

XI. The Nature of Derived Needs

XII. The Integrative Imperatives of Human Culture

XIII. The Instrumentalyl Implemented Vital Sequence

The Functional Theory

Sir James George Frazer

Index

The book contains Bronislaw Malinowski´s outlines on the theory of culture. His approach is functional and in the chapter General Axioms of Functionalism he provides a list of axioms:

A. Culture is essentially an instrumental apparatus by which man is put in a position the better to cope with the concrete specific problems that face him in his environment in the course of the satisfaction he needs.

B. It is a system of objects, activities, and attitudes in which every part exists as a means to an end.

C. It is an integral in which the various elements are interdependent.

D. Such activities, attitudes and objects are organized around important and vital tasks into institutions such as the family, the clan, the local community, the tribe, and the organized teams of economic cooperations, political, legal, and educational activity.

E. From the dynamic point of view, that is, as regards the type of activity, culture can be analyzed into a number of aspects such as education, social control, economics, systems of knowledge, belief and morality, and also modes of creative and artistic expression. (Malinowski 1964: 150)

Further on Malinowski states a cultural process, in which human beings are involved. He names three dimensions of this cultural process, which are artifacts, organized groups and symbolisms, whereas Function and form are related (Malinowksi 1964: 155 ff.) In his chapter Function defined, it is a very short one, Malinowski explains his approach through concepts of use or utility and relationship. Later Malinowski speaks of functional isolates, he values legitimate for cultural analyses.

Malinowski, Bronislaw (1964) A Scientific Theory Of Culture. And Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press

Technorati Tags: malinowski, culture, anthropology, ethnology, theory, science

del.icio.us Tags: anthropology, science, theory, culture, malinowski, ethnology

Review: Hotel Reservations

2007-09-27T18:52:00.000+02:00

I will start my review of the Hotel Reservations website with the critique on the design: And it is positive! The site is built like an easily overviewed blog and has tabs to browse four categories, namely Hotel, Vacation Rental, Car and Air. Three columns divide the seeking tourist´s first page, they are organized by fields of interest. Additonally, currencies can be adjusted to a traveller´s needs. International booking opportunities are given, phone numbers are provided to call toll free. To catch a first impression, simply go to to the site in English, French, German or Italian. Spanish is also available, the second language in the U. S. A. and not only there spoken by millions of people around the world.

The Discount Club membership link offers a monthly newsletter to stay informed about Best deals from around the world. A simple search box offers to fill in your favourite city and the dates of arrival and departure, as well as the number of persons and the number of rooms needed. My test search for Los Angeles and two adults took three seconds to result in 26 local hotels. Each result shows off valuations in stars, on bottom of the page are more options listed: Specified brands or landmarks may be entered, and there is a long list to choose Los Angeles town locations. Suppose you want to live in Hollywood next to the Chinese theatre – type it in. No? You would prefer Venice Beach with its beautiful coastline? Just click on it. If you prefer to use Vacation Rentals and cater yourselves, simply choose the region of desire.

I was impressed by the accuracy of information delivered. Credit Card Safety is guaranteed, Special Internet Rates save money and time. The Lodging FAQ section includes explanations about how to make and confirm reservations, in case of a change of the mind reservations can be cancelled online. No change or cancellation fees!

Written by Sybil Amber for Hotel Reservations 2007 via PayPerPost

Abuse, Mistreatment, Disambiguation, Maltreatment, Misusage, Violence

2007-09-27T15:27:00.001+02:00

According to Wikipedia, the term abuse refers to harmful treatment of somebody or something. It means the maltreatment, misapplication or misusage of a human being, of a thing or an abstractum: A dominating position can be abused to dictate or impose something on somebody. Some forms of abuse are simply violations of something, for instance Human Rights. One of the most cruel things is child abuse, I think. Child Protective Services in the whole world attempt to guard children. I suggest, that there should be universal Childrens´ Human Rights aknowledged, and a list of definitions or categories to help prevent and to recognize, what child abuse is and how children can be helped. Childrens´ Rights are assigned around the world, here is the link to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the UNHCHR site. Amnesty International has a dossier on Children´s Rights, including categories on Child Soldiers and the plan to Stop Child Executions. Amnesty International, founded in 1960 by a London lawyer called Peter Benenson, proposes to educate children in Human Rights and coherent topics.

Children are your future, not only our future. HRW investigates child abuse around the world and works to stop it. International Legal Standards are linked on their website, many possible situations are factored in. Regional Standards are listed below.

Regional Standards

African [Banjul] Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights

African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child

American Convention on Human Rights

Australian Rights

European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms

Here are additional blog posts:

WAVEs http://anthropologicdiary.blogspot.com/2007/08/waves.html

The Society was build on Female Slavery http://anthropologicdiary.blogspot.com/2007/09/society-that-was-built-on-female.html

Petitions http://anthropologicdiary.blogspot.com/2007/09/petitions.html

China: Blogger imprisoned http://anthropologicdiary.blogspot.com/2007/08/china-blogger-imprisoned-for-writing.html

Disability Research: Notizen http://anthropologicdiary.blogspot.com/2006/11/disability-research-notizen.html

Wie lange haben wir fuer Demokratie gekaempft? http://anthropologicdiary.blogspot.com/2006/08/wie-lange-haben-wir-fuer-demokratie.html

And there are many more....Please join thousands of Bloggers, today! Write for Bloggers Against Abuse!

Will the "West" become the universal modell of mankind?

2007-09-25T19:19:00.001+02:00

The following text is going to line out important parts of Maurice Godelier´s lecture, the name of whom I will be abbreviating with G. Professor André Gingrich translated G.´s "Wiener Vorlesungen", id est Vienna Lectures, from the French language into German. I attempt to translate the important parts into English. The bibliographic data - for students and librarians - published in the German edition are:

Godelier, Maurice (1991) Wird der Westen das universelle Modell der Menschheit? Wien: Picus Verlag, ISBN 3-85452-304-1

The Vienna Lectures were - and are - a series of events to present research in relation to the future of society, progress and tendencies in social issues, and the opportunities of cultural and social developments. Having started in spring 1997, these series of lectures became an intellectual jour fixe. Opinion leading and innovative texts were furthermore published in print to serve a wider audience.

Godelier speaks about his work as an anthropologist, which he conducted from 1967. He observed the transformations to be imposed on the Baruya, a tribe living in Papua - New Guinea. These changes in everyday life and the way of thoughts started 1951, when the Baruya were found on the island. Later, namely 1960, the Australian government colonized them. In 1975, the Baruya were declared independent and UN membership turned them into witness bearers of westly progress in this part of the world. Godelier asks then,

But did not the fall of the Berlin wall initialize a new westernizing progress from November 9, 1989 on?

Godelier argues, that the westernizing process of expansion not only comes from the West, but he also names Japan and four or five little dragons as factors. Japan and these dragons, he mentions, have preserved their political sovereignity and cultural identity; whereas Buddhism has played a decisive role. The westernizing progress goes on and on without transporting all elements that are associated to it. Godelier queries

What is the West in its deeper sense today? What are the underlying elements of it?

Godelier means elements associated with the West, that could be dissociated and combined anew - in social and cultural reality and in other parts of the world. As for Godelier, the West is a mixture of the real and the imaginative, of facts and normative forms, of modes of action and modes of thought; all of which result in an affecting and scuffing pool of energy to move around three axes. These axes are three institutional blocks inheriting their own logic: Capitalism, parlamentary democracy and Christianity. The westly strenghts apply to a combination of three realities, that appeared in different times in history and paired rather late. The West is not a modell without flaws, in contrary, complaints come from all over the world: The West colonizes, conquers, is rich and sucks resources; eyes are closed, when liberties are absent, in case regimes serve or ally with the West; in the West coexist rights and disparity, and some are of the opinion still, that capital accumulation base on the legal exploitation of work. Godelier then focusses on tribal societies by asking

What is a tribe?

He explains, that a tribe is a local society, that comprises of ensembles of kinship groups. These groups of kin feel unified by social organisation, modes of thought, rules of marriage and defense and utilization of rescources in a specified territory. So the tribal identity is a blended identity, compound by social and cultural endowment, as well as by identification of conquered or heritable territory, which has to be given to descendents. Generally, Godelier classifies two criteria in relation to tribal societies:

a. Tribes, who lived sovereign or were already integrated in a precolonial state under the governance of a predominant tribe.

b. Via the segmentation of power, namely allocated between more or less equivalent groups, or in the hands of some on top of a given society and hereditary.

The Baruya found in 1951 were sovereign rulers on their territory. Ritual and political power was massed in the hands of associations, which traced their descent to conquerer - groups. Godelier focuses his method on the formulation of processes, that describe the westernizing; its stages and forms, which are easily traceable and reproduced somewhere else. The Baruya live in the center of New Guinea, in the mountains 2000m high. 1951 they were 1800 people having lived in approximately 12 little villages. Twelve clans, eight of them belonged to and were descendends of the conquerer group, cultivated their grounds using slash-and-burn. Additionally, irrigations on terraces and pig breeding, as well as trading salt from plants, supported them. Women cared for the pigs, men went hunting to strengthen their predominance. The society was classless, but not egalitarian organised. The westernizing process covered four stages under the influence of several forces.

Already before 1951, the Baruya acquired steel axes from Sheffield and Solingen without knowledge of the industrial Europe and led to economic and material dependence. A plane and some troops led to the imagination of a big fire bird in which divine entities looking like human beings lived. 1951, when Jim Sinclair and his troops entered the woods nearby, the Baruya were subjected to military forces. In 1960, an officer and his troops entered the valley of Wonénara to build trajectories and the local tribes were registered and deprived their right to fight each other. The officer introduced the new order in the name of Her Majesty Queen of England. Many incidents led to the fact, that the Baruya lost their right to apply their own laws on their own territory; they lost their political sovereignty and cultural autonomy. As soon as peace was instituted, they were counted and systematically controled. They were confronted with the state, a sign of civilisation and human evolution.

In 1966, Christianity was established by missionaries, which brought schools and education for the Baruya. In 1965, the administration recruited 30% of the local men to send them to work at the coastal plantations. In 1967, when the troops arrived, an anthropologist arrived. An academic representing the West; the West was complete, so Godelier states. After modes of power established, there was going to be the power of knowledge.

The Brauya society changed and some of these transformations were accepted positively by the Baruya, like having peace, living in other places than the valleys, travelling by plane or driving trucks. Some women married to live in the cities. Godelier emphasises the change of basic structures of Baruya society in gender relationships: Men fear female impurity little and women the symbols of male predominance, nowadays. To the Baruya white people are no divine entities no more, but they stay predominant. In post-colonial times the Baruya refuse to accept commands or violence.

This transformative processes will go on and change the whole world without implying its three elements, after Godelier. Christianity is not the only intrinsic religion and there is none. Political democracy should be transformed into social democracy. Capitalistic economy and its wealthiness should be distributed more efficiently and juster. The West will triumph first in Europe, later expand to the East. Godelier finishes his argument with some questions:

Do we have to accept the negative, which we recognize in the West? Do we have to applaud or should we steal away on the tips of our toes? Why should we be contented with our situation? Do we know the end of history has come and we live in the best of all worlds?

del.icio.us Tags: baruya, westernizing, godelier

Technorati Tags: culture, westernizing, baruya, godelier

Bloggers Against Abuse

2007-09-23T21:15:00.001+02:00

On September 27th, join 1,000s of bloggers around the world in BlogCatalog's Blogging for a Great Cause Challenge. This Blogging Challenge will be:

Bloggers Against Abuse
September 27th, 2007

The Outcome we are after is to be part of the largest group of bloggers to ever blog about an important cause, all on the same day. So how do you participate?
On September 27th, blog about putting an end to some sort of Abuse (you decide what kind of abuse to blog about).

In the meantime though,
* Spread the word among all the bloggers you know. Perhaps even give them a link to this Discussion.
* If you are a graphic's designer, perhaps you can come up with some small badges announcing the event, that we can then place on our blogs. To share the badge, place it on this thread.
* List any organizations, on this thread, who are involved in putting an end to abuse.

What do you get? You will receive a link to your Blog Post from the Blogcatalog blog when we list everyone who participated. You get to use your blog for an important cause. You get to create blogging history.

Technorati Tags: action, news, writing

del.icio.us Tags: writing, action, hrw, news, humanrights

The society that was built on female slavery (Yoko Ono Lennon)

2007-09-22T18:38:00.001+02:00

The Feminization of Society was written by Yoko Ono in 1971. The article was published a. in abridged version in New York Times, February 1972, and b. in an unabridged version in Sundance Magazine in May 1972. It is now 35 years ago, that the text was published, and to me it did not lose topicality and relevance. In contrary, parts - and these I cite below - have a very close relationship to nowadays society in neo-liberal daze. I have the impression, that we live in an age, in which female freedom defined by men was alienated to "STARS", because financial freedom equals individual freedom, nowadays. Some kind of "hyper-feminine chimera" are imitated nowadays. I mean the always-young, surgically re-conditioned and nubile tableaus poising in preciosity.

Yoko Ono Lennon (1971/1997) explains:

The aim of the feminist movement should not just end with getting more jobs in the existing society, though we should definitely work on that as well. We have to keep on going until the whole of the female race is freed.

How are we going to do this? This society is the very society that killed female freedom: the society that was built on female slavery. If we try to achieve our freedom within the framework of the existing social set-up, men, who run the society, will continue to make a token gesture of giving us a place in their world. Some of us will succeed in moving into elitist jobs, kicking our sisters on the way up. Others will resort to producing babies, or being conned into thinking that joining male perversions and madness is waht equality is about: "join the army", "join the sexist trip", etc.

The ultimate goal of female liberation is not just to escape from male oppression. How about liberating ourselves from our various mind trips such as ignorance, greed, masochism, fear of God and social conventions? It´s hard to easily dismiss the importance of paternal influence in this society, at this time. Since we face the reality that, in this global village, there is very little choice but to coexist with men, we might as well find a way to do it and do it well. [...]

We are in a serious identity crisis. This society is driven by neurotic speed and force accelerated by greed, and frustration of not being able to live up to the image of men and women we have created for ourselves; the image has nothing to do with the reality of people. How could we be an eternal James Bond or Twiggy (false eyelashes, the never-had-a baby- or-a-full-meal look) and raise three kids on the side? In such an image driven-culture, a piece of reality, such as a child, becomes a direct threat to our false existence.

The only game we play together with our children is star-chasing; sadly, not the stars in the sky, but the "STARS" who we think have achieved the standard of the dream image we have imposed on the human race. We cannot trust ourselves anymore, because we know we are, well ... too real. We are forever apologetic for being real. Excuse me for farting, excuse me for making love and smelling like a human being, instead of that odorless celluloid prince and princess image up there on the screen.

Most of us, as women, hope that we can achieve our freedom within the existing social set-up, thinking that, somewhere, there must be a happy medium for men and women to share freedom and responsibility. But if we just took the time to observe the very function of our society, the greed-power-frustration syndrome, we soon would see that there is no happy medium to be achieved. We can, of course, aim to play the same game that men have played for centuries, and inch by inch, take over all the best jobs and eventually conquer the whole world, leaving an extremely bitter male stud-cum-slave class moaning and groaning underneath us. [...]

We are now at a stage where we are eager to compete with men on all levels. But women will inevitably arrive at the next stage, and realize themselves as they are, and not as beings comparative to or in response to men. As a result, the feminist revolution will take a more positive step in the society by offering a feminine direction.

In the past two thousand years of effort, men have shown us their failure in their method of running the world. Instead of falling into the same trap that men fell into, women can offer something that the society never had before because of male dominance. That is the feminine direction. What we can do is take the current society, which contains both masculine and feminine characteristics, and bring out its feminine nature rather than its masculine force which is now at work. We must make more positive usage of the feminine tendencies of the society which, up to now, have been either suppressed or dismissed as something harmful, impractical, irrelevant and ultimately shameful.

I am proposing the feminazation of society; the use of feminine nature as a positive force to change the world. We can change ourselves with feminine intelligence and awareness, into a basically organic, noncompetitive society that is based on love, rather than reasoning. The result will be a society of balance, peace and contentment. We can evolve rather than revolt, come together, rather than claim independence, and fell rather than think. These are characteristics that are considered feminine; characteristics that men despise in women. But have men really done so well by avoiding the development of these characteristics within themselves?

Already, as I catch a glimpse of the new world, I see feminine wisdom working as a positive force. I refer to the feminine wisdom and awareness which is based on reality, intuition and empirical thinking, rather than logistics and ideologies. The entire youth generation, their idiom and their dreams, are headed in a feminine direction. A more advanced field of communication, such as telepathy, is also a phenomenon which can only be developed in a highly feminine climate. The problem is that feminine tendency in the society has never been given a chance to blossom, whereas masculine tendency overwhelms it.

What we need now is the patience and natural wisdom of a pregnant woman, an awareness and acceptance of our natural resources, or what is left of them. Let´s not kid ourselves and think of ourselves as an old and matured civilisation. We are by no means mature. But that is alright. That is beautiful. Let´s slow down and try to grow as organically, and healthfully as a newborn infant. The aim of the female revolution will have to be a total one, eventually making it a revolution for the whole world. [...] It´s good to start now, since it´s never too late to start from the start.

I feel happy, that I have grown up in a part of society to take equality as a fact and given. Emancipated women introduced me to liberation and writers like Betty Friedan, Alice Schwarzer or Rosa Luxemburg. Notably my parents stressed equality in their three childrens´education free from religious or similar oppressions. In school we learned lots about emancipation and womens´ lib, and how hard it was for women to be admitted at the University or professional work, and why. In Rahlgasse High School we were instructed to bear in mind, that this High School was the first to establish women in higher education via the Frauenbewegung. To me, equal rights and duties in all related issues, are self-evident. I concede equal rights and duties to men and women everywhere in the world and I am free of religious regulations, too. Human dignity was and is still infringed in this world. Acceptance and respect should be promoted to make a difference in our minds. It saddens me, that in some societies, and some members of society, still hang on assumptions, like "women do the chores". I feel embarrassed and indignant with stereotypes, like this or that would be "exemplary for women". Generally I think, scientists should participate in discussions in the media and here especially reinforce gender related issues. The topic is so virulent, that the University Vienna has this Gender institution and a focus on Gender Studies.

Quote of the Day: Sharing money is what gives it its value. - Elvis Presley

del.icio.us Tags: gender, anthropology, ethnology, women, equalrights

Technorati Tags: anthropology, ethnology, women, gender

Is: Cultural Diversity

2007-09-20T16:07:00.001+02:00

The multi-cultural project has become a synonym for social failure and halfhearted sissyness of politicians, that rather restrict, than support social and cultural variety. I dwell, that I use mutli-culturalism and the multi-culturalist project in reference to miscarried politics in this (con-)text. If people use the term multi-culti or call for a multi-cultural leadership, something else is meant, as far as I am concerned. To me, they mean the playful and winning variety of a society from an emic view, from the inside, that lives in peace and who does not question for civics to prove who one would be; or which color of skin one had; or which religion one had chosen to believe in; or to which nation one belonged to; or which language one spoke; or how much money one had; these are all signs and symbols used to make a difference. I do not want to spin my discussion into Eco - istic semiotics, now.

If culture, after Geertz, is roughly a system of historically acquired/collected and interpreted symbols, the perception of variety and diversity supports people, who respect each other, because of differences explained, savored and respected. The multi-culti adjective stands for the joy and pleasure of respected differences. Authors or organisations calling for a multi-cultural society mean, that their and other cultures, societies and human beings should be accepted and respected and they speak from an emic view. From an emic view here, I mean, for instance, an author, who lives within a small-scale group within a dominating culture, who writes about a Multicultural Age. Id est Joana Bordas´s Salsa, Soul & Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age, that will be presented in a Signing Event September 26, 2007.

I stress, that with the muticultural project(-s) I mean the failed implemenations of coherent laws and institutions in - not only Western - societies, and therefore I suggest a new approach by the means of cultural diversity and variety. I think, that a broader perspective of variety should bear acceptance and respect corresponding to cultures and resulting social issues. The discussion is not about multi-cultural tolerance or the finding of differences: The quest goes for respect of differences, even if they were not uttered, and for acceptance of otherness, be it Black, white, religious, poor, gender-related or any other sign or symbol of otherness. If a model of diversity and variety counteracts single-minded lines of thoughts and weak agency, these categories will be good enough to allow debates. The fact or quality of being diverse connotes cultural diversity, which denotes a noticable cultural heterogeneity: Human beings do not have to follow ideologies of some theory, because there are Human Rights to hold egalitarian societies together. I want to refer to recent discussions about building mosques: The media did not inform the public, correctly, which is the case quite often. Take the Viennese example: A given house is to be refurbished. One room will be equipped to say one´s prayers. So why do parts of the local population demonstrate against renovation and a religious center? I think the following is an outline:

I think the public was informed wronlgy. It is not a big mosque they were talking about, it is a small place of spirituality.
Parts of the public do not know about democracy and the religious freedom so many people fought and died for.
Xenophobia: Fear from extremists and fanatics turned into hate of the mass (media).

To me the question arises, if enlightenment in all fields of society is at stake. It is, I am sure. I am looking forward to critique and comments. Moreover, I appreciate actions to support Human Rights and respect. Cultural diversity offers a range of possibilities, whereas mutliculturalism in my opinion rather limits opportunities by referring to only some notions of being human. So it matters, I assume, to talk about Cultural Diversity and manifoldness, and not to limit (endless) variety to multi, a countable number.

Technorati Tags: respect, research, society, social

del.icio.us Tags: anthropology, ethnology, society, social, humanrights

Quote of the Day:
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions. - Albert Einstein

Addendum Breaking News 8.20 PM: Now, I saw Andrea was blogging about the Islamic Youth http://andreabenlassoued.at/?p=229, additionally there is an initiative out, by the Concerned Anthropologists!

Art and Anthropology in practice

2007-09-18T16:10:00.001+02:00

Although I do not know what is meant by this question, "What happens when artists and anthropologists are asked to do something together rather than talk from the safety of their own practice?" by Anna Grimshaw, the CAA Workshop offers documentation on Art and Anthropology, as well as on featured objects. Artists and anthropologists connection is a fruitful entanglement, I think. Whether artists be inspired by science and anthropologists´ knowledge, like stories or other narratives, or anthropologists process their minds into artwork, the dialogues and communication, the dialectics of inputs and outputs create an area of prolific tension. So, do we speak of methods and approaches, or of results and effects? Or will we grasp the process of communication of artists and anthropologists and document what was produced? What does saftey of practice in this context mean? This essay On Art and Anthropology with a foreword by Pavel Buechler explains in Amanda Ravetz´s words, that "The challenge as I saw it was to enable participants to open up and explain their practice, while at the same time engaging as equal partners in an active process that would result not in art work or anthropology work so much as lay bare the kernels of each approach."

Long have artists adapted anthropological information in some way, see Gaugin, for instance. The artistic movements of the beginnings of the 20th century, too. Jazz musicians. As much as I remember there was Herbie Hancock playing with Burundi Black from Africa, back in the eighties. The scientists Sowah Mensah, David Fanshaw, ... Cultural fusion in music is called world music, nowadays. On the one hand one can easily find examples, namely artists referring to anthropology, on the other hand, when it comes to scientists applying or using art - ?

What:	Benin - Kings and Rituals. Court arts from Nigeria Many of these superb works of art are also important ritual objects, valuable symbols of status, or nuanced historical documents that illustrate court ceremonies, versions of which survive to this day.
When:	Dienstag, Oktober 2, 2007 5:00 to Sonntag, Jänner 6, 2008 6:00
Where:	Musée du quai Branly 37, Quai Branly Paris, 75007 France

Technorati Tags: anthropology, ethnology, art

del.icio.us Tags: anthropology, ethnology, art

Rouch

2007-09-15T19:43:00.001+02:00

This is the Comité du film Ethnographique, which has the Jean Rouche Bilan in the Musée de l´Homme in 2008. There is an entry form and a statement about ethnographic film. The festival addresses professionals in Anthropology and cinema. Innovation is asked!

Jean Rouch was born in 1917 and died in an accident 2004. Rouch co-founded the Bilans, IMDb has his filmography and more performance data. Marcel Mauss was his teacher, and Rouch is the founder of the Cinema Verité: Direct interaction of the filming and the filmed mark this style of non-fiction film making, which includes reflexivity and the camera provocation to evoke veritable interviews.

What:

Festival International Jean Rouch
Le film documentaire et le film ethnologique ont donc poursuivi des chemins qui les ont fait peu à peu se croiser sinon se rejoindre dans une exploration commune des nouveaux langages de límage et du son. - Ces orientations actuelles qui font des langages audiovisuels des instruments spécifiques de connaissance sont issus pour une bonne part des expériences menées depuis les années cinquante et notamment par Jean Rouch.

Where:

Musée de l´Homme

17, place du Trocadéro
Paris, 75116 France

del.icio.us Tags: film, medianthropology, media, doc

Technorati Tags: film, medianthropology, media

re:place 2007

2007-09-15T18:39:00.001+02:00

The 2nd International Conference re:place 2007 focuses on the histories of art, media, technology and science. It takes place in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, November 2007. Some lectures are held, or rather workshops, covering technology, arts and refering i. e. to Digital Humanities in the Opening Session, classic Islamic Art to new media art in Panel 3, and so on. Panel 9 deals with cross-cultural perspectives on for instance African Digital Imaginaries. MediaArtHistory provides the scheduled program.

MAH lists authors and titles to create a repository for researchers, on the community list there is Anthropology found! Sheila Petty writes about Transnational Identities in the context of Cyberspace, Maria V. Giulietti dialogues over New Media Native Art, Tam County refers to concepts in pre-modern China, his paper is called From Nothingness to Technology. Mary L. Morbey considers Cybercolonialism and Cyberglobalization on topic, Martin Rieser has Locative Media and Spatial Narrative for us. Barbara Paul bears partial perspectives, transversal politics and situated practices as of multicultural feminism in mind. To register and access the EPapers one needs a valid EMailaddress and a password.

What:	re:place 2007 re:place 2007 will be an international forum for the presentation and the discussion of exemplary approaches to the rapport between art, media, science and technology. With the title, 're:place', we propose a thematic focus on locatedness and the migration of knowledge and knowledge production in the interdisciplinary contexts of art, historiography, science and technology.
When:	Donnerstag, November 15, 2007 12:00 to Sonntag, November 18, 2007 12:00
Where:	Haus der Kulturen der Welt John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 Berlin, 10557 Germany

Technorati Tags: media, anthropology, medianthropology, epapers

del.icio.us Tags: medianthropology, newmedia, media

Qualms

2007-09-13T21:25:00.001+02:00

It is hard work to study Social and Cultural Anthropology and to a job. There are seminars to teach students the basics and academic levels of quantitative and qualitative research- they last one semster. Students have to learn how to write in scientific / academic style, plus there is a seminar about how to work scientifically. Professors insist, that students should acquire additional skills. Be it, as it may, studies are hard and lots of knowledge have to be compiled and managed by students, themselves, and I am not the type of person who is satisfied with good lecture notes and one must-read book. I got to delve into what I study to fully experience my interest and subject.

Each book is like a little universe opening the mind. It does good to have a comfortable couch, tea and a soft blanket. Listening to music, like Mozart´s piano concerts, or to Mahler´s romantic compositions, or some Jazz. By now, I mean music, that is not new to my ear, so that I do not have to listen closely, like The Beatles, or Jazz by Louis Armstrong or Errol Garner. Many Jazz musicians - from the beginnings on - have adpated classical music for instance by Bach. More and more I consider the functions of music in the world. Well, there are many, and the entertainment factor is only one. Music accompanies various situations, like birth(-days) or other rites. So it is with every piece of music - it opens a little universe.

I listen to the Approximately Infinite Universe music, over and over. Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band present thoughts and critique on society with music. Yoko Ono writes about the Feminization of Society and what I think of nowadays society is written in this text, which was published in 1972: "This society is driven by neurotic speed and force accelerated by greed, and frustration of not being able to live up to the image of men and women we have created for ourselves: the image, which has nothing to do with the reality of people."

Thought provoking 21st century

2007-09-10T17:20:00.001+02:00

1 About 21st Century Anthropology

Please read this post on antropologi.info: Keith Hart and Thomas H. Eriksen: This is 21st century anthropology and the associated texts, like the speech.

2 About Mainstream

I would like to start my reasoning with a citation of the IG-History at the University Vienna. "In der Gesellschaft gilt das Dogma, dass Heterosexualität in allen Lebensbereichen die Norm darstellt und dass Abweichungen gegen diese Dualität nicht nur unerwünscht, sondern sogar bedrohlich sind. Gerade was die menschliche Sexualitaet anbelangt vertritt der Mainstream extrem verlogene Ansichten" (Institutsgruppe Geschichte under Antiheteronormativ). This says, that mendacious dualisms concerning sexuality adhere to the Mainstream of society.

I would not want to anthropologically investigate the mainstream. Society has enough of mainstream sources and testimonials, I think. And especially the Central European public I mean with it. I felt embarrassed having had a lecture about Swedish XMas decoration, some years ago. This is certainly not what I expect from Social and Cultural Anthropology. It is not, that I don´t like Sweden, I have learned Swedish for one semester, I admit - I only can read it, not speak - but: White, catholic or other christians and well living?

Nope. I prefer to learn and write about people, unheard and unseen, whelmed with bias. Well, just some thoughts... probably relationships and communication...

Center for 21st Century Studies: http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/21st/index.shtml 2007-09-03 5:21 PM

Petitions

2007-09-06T18:50:00.001+02:00

1 This petition claims the Right to stay in Austria for Immigrants: http://www.gruene.at/dahamisdaham/ - Immigrants should have the right to stay in Austria, if they are integrated.

2 This petition urges a change in energy politics, to be send to the Austrian government: http://www.oekonews.at/index.php?mdoc_id=1023317

3 The world coalition against Death Penalty has a petition online. Please sign at http://www.worldcoalition.org/modules/accueil

4 Reporters Sans Frontiéres petitions http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=26

It is certainly a good thing to sign petitions by supporting Human Rights. It is a good form of donating some money to organizations, that offer membership services for relatively little money to help people in need. Lists of signatures create pressure on politicians. Pressure groups work constantly. NGOs employ lawyers.

You can make a difference!

We can change the world!

del.icio.us Tags: humanrights

Technorati Tags: humanrights

Atheism

2007-09-03T18:44:00.001+02:00

One of the best resources online is published and updated regularly by the Internet Infidels: http://www.infidels.org/ - the Secular Web offers a drop of reason in a pool of confusion. There is the News Wire for freethinkers, and internet radio by the Infidel Guy, also. The pamphlet provides a description for the services and this list is international.

What is Atheism? I explain atheism like this: Atheism is the absence - but not the lack (atheist do not lose religion or miss it) - of religion or religious behavior. It is the non-existence of belief in entities, a diety or more, often associated with the imagination of (the) supernatural(s), (a) "soul(s)" or "spirit(s)" in material things or symbols or intangible assets, or the non-presence or voidness of any religious acts or agency. Atheism to me is not only agnosia and the denial of a belief in god(s) or similar entities, it is a state of mind, an approach and a view of life without the performance of such.

Beliefs are projections of human thoughts into human environment, beliefs represent assumptions of accuracy of human thought and human existence in the world. Human thoughts are insofar true, valid and inherent, as human communicative processes, and therefore languages, too, are systems to create and to adopt human reality called life. Communication makes human reality together posessed experience and knowledge. Religions are cultural phenomena, here are some explanations at Wikipedia, Durkheim´s theory of the sacred and the profane or the AnthroBase papers tagged Religion.

Events: There is for instance the 2007 AAI "Crystal Clear Atheism" convention online: The Atheist Alliance International promotes a life free from religious intrusions and offers the opportunity of debate about the philosophy of atheism, online. The 2007 Conference of the Center for Inquiry takes place at The New York Academy of Sciences to report about reason and secularism in America. Student freethinkers, scholars and others will speak about Secularism through History, A Time of Challenge and Opportunity or Science and the Public.

Related Links

Atheism http://groups.yahoo.com/group/atheism/ 2007-09-01 6:40 PM

Atheist_Coalition http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Atheist_Coalition/2007-09-01 6:40 PM

AtheistsConnected http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AtheistsConnected/ 2007-09-01 6:40 PM

AtheistsUnited http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AtheistsUnited/ 2007-09-01 6:40 PM

atheist-talk http://groups.yahoo.com/group/atheist-talk 2007-09-01 6:40 PM

Center for Inquiry http://www.centerforinquiry.net/ 2007-09-03 2:11 PM

Secular Humanism http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Human_ism/ 2007-09-01 6:40

SCAE: Social and Cultural Anthropology Efficiency Award

2007-09-02T21:16:00.001+02:00

5 Blogs preferred in Social and Cultural Anthropology:

Antropologi.Info by Lorenz Khazaleh
AnthroBlogs by John Norvell
Ethno::Log by the Institute for cultural/social anthropology and african studies
Digital Ethnography by Michael Wesch
Schlau und Schoen? by Andrea Ben Lassoued

Congratulations, you won the Social and Cultural Anthropology Effiency Award!

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. Here are the rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the SCAE with a link to the post that you wrote. This is the image:

Please read this text on memetags and start your "5 Blogs preferred in Social and Cultural Anthropology" - list. The tag is - SCAE - to add as a blog tag.

Technorati Tags: SCAE, anthrotips, anthropology, ethnology

del.icio.us Tags: SCAE, anthrotips, anthropology, ethnology

Scientific Thought Production

2007-09-02T16:12:00.000+02:00

1 Read, re - read, read again, and - !Bibliographies: Read everything your professors suggest. Many of the faculty publish bibliographies, librarians also provide services on questions. There are some kinds of reading being applied to science: Reading from top to bottom, looking for phrases, like my theory is... And, of course reading each line to get the deeper sense of a text. I read everywhere, I always did, but for scienctific reading newcomers I would suggest to carry a book with you, whenever, wherever. Read in the bus, in the subway, read waiting for somebody or on the couch. You will get used to it.

2 Collect Ideas: Always carry a notebook with you, or record your thoughts.
Collect these notebooks. Ideas and other notes might be seen from a different view weeks, months or years later. Watch TV or surf the net, browse book stores, talk to people you do or don´t know: Opinions and thoughts shared often produce a flow of thoughts in new directions. Brainstorm on paper at least once a week. Record association chains, write down your dreams. Keep these collected data safe, in boxes, books or store them on CD.

3 Write a blog: Writing a blog will give you the opportunity to write on a regular basis. Also, reflecting about style and developing an own style is supported by this kind of writing. There are many books out on the market about writing. Read them. Write. Otto Kruse wrote this fantastic book called Keine Angst vor dem leeren Blatt: In eight chapters he describes the obstacles often experienced and he explains how to start best. He says, that the prospective author has to be open to write down nearly everything. He then suggests to write for two weeks, every day. Clustering is a method commonly known in creative work. Pick a word, it does not matter which one, like fear, book, wood, picture, or research, and write it into the middle of a white sheet of paper. Then build strings around it by associating each string with more and more words, untile the sheet of paper ist full. I have an example for you, on poverty: See picture!

Train this weeks, months, this makes your thoughts visible. I have to admit, I was an excellent writer in High School, but not on scientific grounds. Scientific writing is learning and doing step-by-step, first collect ideas and thoughts. Then think about what you want to do with the text. Then - Kruse calls it - transform your structured notes, ideas, and thoughts into clauses. And so on. Thilo Baum´s walkthrough in thirty minutes serves another purpose of writing, namely Journalism. Free-Writing is offered by Lutz Werder in Kreatives Schreiben: This is a very easy technique, just write for five minutes without stopping. Whatever comes to your mind, consequently. Although I work on laptop often, paper gives me this feeling of having all collected information at once: Sheets of paper may be spread all over the table. More and mor blogs are suggested to support psychological work, too. I do not want to reaveal a list, please research yourself.

4 Research
I research all the time. I have this software called History Collector, it help. I tend to suffer information overload. If this happens to you, urge yourself to rest for two to four days.
The internet, books, catalogues and databases serve information gathering very well. Try to find out, what services your local library or University offer. Talk to colleages, and record or write the most important issues into your notebook.

5 Sources
Baum, Thilo (2005) 30 Minuten fuer gutes Schreiben. Offenbach: Gabal (2nd edition)
Kruse, Otto (2005) Keine Angst vor dem leeren Blatt. Frankfurt / New York: campus concret (11th Edition)
Werder, Lutz von (1992) Kreatives Schreiben von Diplom- und Doktorarbeiten. Berlin: Schibri

Town Talk

2007-08-31T21:19:00.001+02:00

Theory and research were presented in Vienna, July 17 - 19, 1982; the volume Town-Talk resulted from this coop to publish results on a worldwide level. Walter Dostal was the chair of the Vienna Institute, then, as is André Gingrich, today. The introduction prefigures The Global Approach, which is "the analyses of urbanism and urbanization on a worldwide level" with regard to The National and Regional Processes of Urbanization and Aspects of Urban Culture (Ansari/Nas 1983: 3 f.). Several papers explain various scientific approaches, "The approaches of the contributors cover a wide range of the study of urban urban phenomena: action-behaviourist, politico-economic, dependency and underdevelopmental, world systems, symbolic and aesthetic." (Southall 1983: 6) Aidan Southall formulates his interest in "Cities in Time and Space" (Ansari/Nas 1983: 7), and later he writes, "I would argue that in the post-industrial age urbanization is still concentration, but in a new sense, at a new level. It is no longer a local concentration contrasting urban and rural areas, but a global concentration corresponding to the global scale of the world capitalist system, in which even socialist countries are partially involved." (Southall 1983: 19) The author then explains what he means, "The concentration is no longer one of buildings, or bodies, or even of face to face relationships, but rather a concentrated network of electronically mediated relationships."(Southall 1983: 19)

Oshomha Imoagene analyses 1 The nature of West African cities, 2 Patterns of migration in West Africa, and 3 Urbanization and underdevelopment in West Africa. West Africa has long history of cultures, and so in urbanization, where with i. e. Yoruba, "In this places land was communally rather than lineage owned and individuals had rights to their share as long as theirs crops grew."(Imoagene 1983: 68)

Joyce Aschenbrenner and Kathryn Skinner present a paper about art traditions in urban communities of the U. S. A., where the suburbs were striken by poverty and development programs supported political and economic life, "For the artists in our research, the distinction between art and other areas of life is not clearly delineated; several noted the artistic values expressed in clothing and decorating onself and one´s house, in cooking and other mundane activities."(Aschenbrenner/Skinner 1983: 116).

***************************

Contents

Introduction (G. Ansari and P. J. M. Nas)

1. Towards a Universal Urban Anthropology (A. Southall)

2. New Directions in Urban Anthropology (P. C. W. Gutkind)

3. The Struggle for the Third World City (W. J. M. Prins and P. J. M. Nas)

4. Charcteristics of Urban Growth in the Gulf States (G. Ansari and I. Qutub)

5. Urbanism, Urbanization and Underdevolpment: The West African Experience (O. Imoagene)

6. From Pre-Industrial to Modern Igbo Towns (A. A. Dike)

7. Viable Traditions in Urban Japan: Matsuri and Chonaikai (K. Aoyagi)

8. Family Art Traditions in Contemporary Society (J. Aschenbrenner and K. Skinner)

9. Divorce and Development in Kuwait (A. H. Hussein)

10. The Historical Development of Urban Anthropology in Venezuela (M. Suárez and R. Torrealba)

11. Urban Anthropology in the U. S. A.: Current Work and Directions for the Future (L. Plotnicov)

12. Past, Present and Future of Dutch Urban Anthropology (P. J. M. Nas and W. J. M. Prins)

Contributors

***************************

Ansari, Ghaus/Nas, Peter J. M. (Editors) (1983) Town-Talk. The Dynamics of Urban Anthropology. Leiden: Brill.

Recently, I found some tests referring to Urban Legends: This is a field, which interests me lots. Talking about Urban Legends, I noted, that many of my friends reflect on some of these legends. Anyway, About.com has a domain on Urban Legends and Folklore, which suggests to research this vast field by applying scientific knowledge about mythology.

Amber, Sybil (2007) Anthropo Logic Journals.

A Riddle is a Paradox, indeed

2007-08-31T18:52:00.001+02:00

Baumann localised his book on Rethinking National, Ethnic and Religious Identities, and states: "To solve the riddle, one needs to rethink what is meant by nationality or the nation-state, by ethnic identity or ethnicity, and by religion as a basis of culture." (Baumann 1999: vii) Multiculturalism for him is a riddle, "Having reviewed a multiculturalist vision uncritical of the nation- state and another seemingly multiculturalist one that reduces people´s culture to their religion at birth, let us turn to the third reification that must be overcome: the reduction of people´s culture to their ethnic identity." (Baumann 1999: 103)

I think, that multiculturalisms are theories, that are too weak to translate them into everyday practice. In reference to the fact, that human beings may be members of several cultures/cultural groups (rf. Baumann 1999: 99 f.), I think, that 1. people do (re-)define cultural communities, over and over; 2. (multi-)culturalisms of any kind and theory would not practically have an effect in reality, because people wouldn´t let themselves be reduced to their religion, nation or else. So the question arises, how is cultural identity constituted? To make a long story short by assuming, that culture is system of symbols (rf. Geertz), then groups of people would be better understood, if their symbols were socially understandable or explained. If the origins of identity are culturally influenced, because cultures are shared by many, then cultural identity has to do wih communication. From this it follows, that societies in nations or nation-like groups, like for instance the E. U., i. e. their representatives, should reduce their attempts to formulate what culture would be, in a way, that makes respect and tolerance complyable with an (individual´s) human condition(s) and the Human Rights, plus ammendments. A manifold society and multifaceted cultures would respect and accept particularities of individuals or groups. Cultural identities change permanently, communication filtered the cultural divide.

I don´t know how many Anthropologists are comissioned in the E. U. executive boards, I mean, how many Social and Cultural Anthropologists - specialists for cultures - are employed to solve problems relating to culture(s). And: How can tensions relating to culture(s) be resolved without specialists for culture(s)? "How can we award the same universal recognition to an ever-widening variety of mutually exclusive designs of authenticity and identity, especially when these involve a politics of (stressing) difference?" (Baumann 1999: 108)

As for Baumann pluralisms were inconclusive and the meaningful exclusivist in extreme. Professor Gingrich offers the dialogue as a medium to communicate social and cultural conflicts to achieve respect and tolerance. The Respect Project offers scientific and lawful standards, they have a database online.

***************************

Contents

1. "I Have A Dream" - but Who Os It For? Civil Rights, Human Rights, or Community Rights?

2. From Dreaming to Meaning: The Multicultural Triangle. National Culture, Ethnic Culture, Religion as Culture

3. The Nation-State, I: Postethnic or Pseudotribe? Why Nationa-States Are Not Ethnically Neutral

4. The Nation-State, II: Business or Temple? Why Nation-States Are Not Religiously Neutral

5. Ethnicity: Blood or Wine? Not Immutable Heritage, but Positioning in Context

7. Culture: Having, Making, or Both? From an Essentialist through a Processual to a Discursive Understanding

8. Multicultural Theory, I: The Sales Talk and the Small Print. Are You Same ENough to Be Equal?

9. Multicultural Theory, II: The Values and the Valid. What Is It Prof. Taylor Should "Recognize"?

10. Multicultural Praxis: The Banal and the Best. From Culti-Parading to Multi-Relating

11. From Dreaming to Meaning: A Summary. Multiculturalism Is A New Understanding of Culture

12. From Meaning to Practice: What Students Can Do. New Understandings Require New Projects

References

Index

***************************

Baumann, Gerd (1999) The Multicultural Riddle. Rethinking National, Ethnic, and Religious Identities. New York: Routledge.

del.icio.us Tags: thoughts, culture, diversity, human

Technorati Tags: human, culture, diversity

Quote of the Day:
If we find a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

China: Blogger imprisoned for writing about his thoughts

2007-08-31T12:51:00.001+02:00

heise online - Chinesischer Internet-Dissident in psychiatrische Anstalt gesteckt: This article reveals, that He Weihua was imprisoned in psychiatrists for writing about changes in price of meat and corruption in the Communist Party in the Boxun website blog. The group Reporters Sans Frontiéres protested against this action, the focussed Boxun network provides an English version to practise press freedom. The newsletter section of Reporters Without Borders dates back to 1999, membership for € 15,- a year leaves the option to spend a little more to support the group´s work.

The social usage of photography

2007-08-30T11:47:00.001+02:00

Research was undertaken by order of Kodak - Pathé. Bourdieu starts with 109 pages, which are the introduction and the first two chapters of the book. His elaboration about sociological theory and habitus precede Bourdieu´s statement on the model of motivations to practice photographs. He writes, that taking photos would be satisfactory in five ways: 1 Protection against time, 2 communication, 3 emotional expression, 4 self-realisation, under the aspect of social prestige and 5 escape from reality.

This implies functions of photography, namely 1 to lower fear relating to perishability and limited existence, 2 to ease communication with others and reconstruct togetherness or proof of interest and affection, 3 to provide a photographer´s media to self-realisation by magic appropriation or fascinating creation of the pictured object, and to experience power in expressing one´s feelings more intense, with an artistic intention or to manifest one´s techniqual mastership; 4 to meet demands of prestige by demonstrating consumption or recorded personal efforts; 5 to escape or dispel conditions of reality playfully. Bourdieu names motivations and settings of photographic practice by referring to the Habitus of social strata, then.

His analysis refers to Durkheim´s thesis on the function of festivities, and indicates the ritual characteristics behind photography. The photograph itself stands for the reproduction of the group and its integration. Photography therefore is expression and a medium for integration.

Here are the contents:

***********************

Vorwort

Piérre, Bourdieu: Einleitung

Teil I

Piérre, Bourdieu: Kult der Einheit und kultivierte Unterschiede

Piérre, Bourdieu: Die gesellschaftliche Definition der Photographie

Teil II

Robert Castel/Dominique Schnapper: Aesthetische Ambition und gesellschaftliche Ansprueche

Luc Boltanski: Die Rhetorik des Bildes

Gérard Lagneau: Optische Tricks und Gaukelspiel

Jean-Claude Chambordeon: Mechanische, unkultivierte Kunst

Luc Boltanski/Jean-Claude Chamboredon: Fachwissen oder Begabung?

Teil III

Robert Castel: Bilder und Phantasiebilder

Anhang

Anmerkungen

***********************

Bourdieu, Piérre / Boltanski, Luc / Castel, Robert / Chamboredon, Jean - Claude / Lagneau, Gérard / Schnapper, Dominique (2006) Eine illegitime Kunst. Die sozialen Gebrauchsweisen der Photographie. Hamburg: Europaeische Verlagsanstalt.

Quote of the Day:
To cease smoking is the easiest thing. I ought to know. I've done it a thousand times. - Mark Twain

Technorati Tags: media, photography, anthropology, ethnology

del.icio.us Tags: photography, media, anthropology, anthrotips, ethnology

Die Weisse Massai

2007-08-29T21:50:00.001+02:00

The German title reveals, I read the book in German. How come? Well, I was enjoying my holidays. I thought I go to the bookshop and look for something to read in the sun. Corinne Hofmann tells her story, emotional, easy to read - in short sentences, and the reader has the impression to be right in the middle of her adventure. She describes, how she fell in love with Lktinga, where she met him first: On the ship. Her involvation in African live and the daily routine can be easily traced. The book is an easy to read love story, and from the anthropological view one can learn some words and meanings. There are follow ups for even more holidays in the sun called Zurueck aus Afrika and Wiedersehen in Barsaloi.

Hofmann, Corinne (2000) Die weisse Massai. Muenchen: A1 Verlag

Anthropology goes public?

2007-08-29T17:39:00.001+02:00

Which sense does it make to transport scientific knowledge to a wider audience? What are public intellectuals? What do public intellectuals do?

As for me, the answer is surprisingly simple: I write Blogs and I publish my (undergrad) work on my u:net website (the University webspace for students in VIE). What happens to me oftentimes is, that people in the subway, in the bus or on the street address me directly (yet, I don´t know why this is so). Today while going to work, an elderly woman blurt out in the subway elevator, she wouldn´t be able to cope with this or that. This happens every day. It became a kind of task of mine to listen and advice.

Blogging, posting to newspaper lists or forum discussions are also a mode to go public. I endorse media work: Perhaps more anthropologists should “come out” in TV debates, like they have them in the ORF – here my question is why the directors or producers would not invite anthropologists for themed discussions on i. e. magic, religion, environment et cetera. I definitely miss this, not personally I, but it seems that only a sample of scientists would be employed by media.

What would public intellectuals attempt to transport in understandable terms and speech? Anthropology is a key science to me and public intellectuality has little to do with theory, I think, but is more a question of comprehensibility and tangibility. Intellectualitiy itself does not run for publicity for some reasons, by portability and inimitability. Scientific language needs information, like vocabulary, well-chosen verbalization and efficient restatements. Only a small percentage of the world population studies and belongs to the academic ivory tower. So academics should think about the dialectics of information translation, I should call it, a. to the academic community and b. for the averagely, in the sense of acquired knowledge, educated public.

How could academics acquire competencies in communicating verbaly skilled? In my opinion, each student of Anthropology - talking of Social and Cultural Anthropology - should go through psychological tests, like having analyzed structures of personality or psychological disposition. This and the new tenets, i. e. at the University Vienna, for a so-called orchid-like science would help to strengthen its position and status. As a consequence Social and Cultural Anthropology would produce a greater effect on society by generating pools of interest and knowledge of people, about people. The better the training for acceptance and tolerance, the better promotion of democratic assets will mesh.

This short text was inspired by the EAnth mailing list. I hope, that as an undergrad I understood well and produced scientific comment and thought sharing in respect of what I am able to read and learn by participating. The idea of Public Anthropology I found first some two years ago on this site: Public Anthropology.

Diversity multiplies chances

2007-08-23T14:15:00.001+02:00

I am not through with the book, yet, but I found this lovingly sympathetic arguments: "The chaos provides the variability to permit an evolutionary process to discover more powerful and efficient solutions." (Kurzweil 2005: 45)

This paragraph says, that the more human beings live, the bigger is the pool for survival. This means more creativity and productivity can be reached through diversity. And this also means, the better we can communicate, the more opportunities we build to live. This option explains, why our future will show more quality via supporting cultural variety and diversity. The more manifold human beings evolve, the more possibilities we accomplish.

Kurzweil later on refers to sexual reproduction as a source for greater diversity, as he lists mutations and ever-changing environmental conditions in his example (rf. Kurzweil 2005: 46). In addition to his argument, in my interpretation concerning social consequences, he reasons designs of biology, namely "probabalistic fractals" and "deterministic fractals", "Genes supply the design information, but the detail in an organism is vastly greater than the genetic design information." (Kurzweil 2005: 46)

So it is clear as is the summer sun? (Shakespeare, Henry V)

As for intolerant, partial, biased and single-edged people: Beyond doubt therefore stands variability, diversity, variety and chaos. The old theories of a multi-cultural society prove too weak, because society does not (and cannot) explain how many is multi? (rf. Lukas - Hakami - lecture: Beruehmte Kontroversen in der Anthropologie).

Kurzweil, Ray (2005) The Singularity Is Near. U. S. A.: Penguin Books

Fame Sybil: http://www.bloggingtofame.com/action.php?view=profile&id=1358

Gadgets and widgets

2007-08-21T20:04:00.000+02:00

Recently, as my readers might have realized, I found this nice website containing a neat service: The Brilliant Button Maker, which is a badge maker designed by Luca Zappa. I like it and designed some badges already ...

These little *.png - files may be stored on a local computer and linked to website. They are 80 x 15 small and can be designed including pictures. These badges use the silkscreen letters and colors are adjustable. Even the border colors may be chosen individually, and of course: the words or abbreviations.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

blackaustria

2007-08-21T19:51:00.001+02:00

blackaustria announces its program on blackaustria.at: Black people in Austria still have lots of problems. Discrimination - see also: ENAR Fact Sheet on multiple, compound and intersectional discrimination (*.pdf, 119,62 KB) - is still a part of day-by-day life in Austria. blackaustria therefore started a so-called communication campaign to explain and train reductions of prejudices. Biased opinions, ignorance and partiality derive from little knowledge, stereotypes need enlightenment. Individuals may support community work by writing articles in their blogs, papers or reports. This is why I will implement this banner on Anthropologic Diary, I feel deeply moved by having been invited for a project presentation. I would like to direct you to these studies published, they are in German and relate to the impact of the communication campaign on a. elders, b. people without High School Diploma in Vienna and c. the Black Community.

This party has Leiberltausch as its motto, T - Shirts will be presented this evening in September.

This project won with the Sozialmarie 2007 in the category new and innovative social projects!

Technorati Tags: Black, community, discrimination

del.icio.us Tags: Black, community, discrimination

Jazz: BHBJ

2007-08-19T15:13:00.001+02:00

I edited and cut this video, then published it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOdMfU3S0Zc . Thanks to the Austrian ORF I could copy an old VHS to DVD in best quality, possible - on my machine. This is the Barrelhouse Jazzband located in Vienna in the 1960s of the 20th century: Heinz Feix (b), Peter Hoffmann (p), Otti Kitzler (t), Horsti Bichler (dr), Alfons Wuerzl (cl) and Norbert Vas (tb) are the musicians. They perform three pieces of Jazz, which were very popular in the 1920s: 1 is called Where Am I?, the second is the Flat Foot Floogie, the third on the Shimmy Sha Wabble.

Vienna - Barrelhouse Jazzband
This kind of Jazz focuses on entertainment, it was played in the cafés and bars, but also on the streets in the Deep South. The Barrelhouse Jazzband Vienna was honored for best classical Jazzband in the sixties, as were some of the musicians: Horsti Bichler, the drummer, and my daddy, Otti Kitzler playing trumpet and English horn. The BHBJ refers to the Chicago Style and Dixieland. They published several CDs, recently, and earlier a single and the famous Pferdeplatte.

Here I found something about the Flat Foot Floogie at Ethnopoetics including the lyrics. Jerome Rothenberg writes about lyrics:

"While the initial focus of ethnopoetics was on orality and performance, the discourse turned as well to the visible aspects of language — writing & inscription — both as a persistent contemporary concern & as an often unacknowledged kingpin of a revitalized & expanded ethnopoetics. In an age of cybernetic breakthroughs, the experimental tradition of modernist poetry & art has expanded our sense of language in all its forms, the written along with the oral. In doing this, it should also have sensitized us to the existence of a range of visual/verbal traditions and practices, not only in literate cultures but in those also that we have named "non"- or "pre"-literate — extending the meaning of literacy beyond a system of (phonetic) letters to the fact of writing itself." (Rothenberg: http://www.ubu.com/ethno/visuals.html).

Popularizing the Shimmy in America tells its story. The shimmy was a new kind of dancing dating back to 1910, and "One of the most talked-about dances of the time was `the shimmy`."(Bryant, Rebecca 2002 at JStor: American Music).

The best way to learn about Jazz is to listen to the music: Listen to the sounds and try to get the lyrics. There are lots of internet sites about Jazz. Here are related links:

All About Jazz: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/

Big Band Database: http://nfo.net/

Jazzology: http://www.jazzology.com/jazzology_records.php

Chicago Jazz Archive: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/cja/

del.icio.us Tags: music, muzak, jazz, bhbj

Critique Of Creativity

2007-08-17T21:47:00.001+02:00

I found this book on the news board of the library. I think the issue of Creativity is a central and vital one for artists, as well as it is for publishers, critics and art consumers. Theories of Creativity are questioned in the first part of the book, four authors discuss effects, politics, reasons and values of art in nowadays society. Part two informs the reader about Industries of Creativity: What is meant by this phrasing? It reminds me on the late eighties installations and implementations of Art, especially the sociolect having been used by some artists in Vienna, then. Four writers explain the philosophy behind Creative Industries, one of them gives an example of the development of micro economics and influence on arts in London. The third part offers insights into precarious situations of artists and art production. Part four presents thoughts on critique by artists, social critique and communication. Finally, Art and Innovation offers not only a historical view on Impressionism, we also learn, that joking was an example of how tightly the approach to creativity is laced.

The book is written in German, published by Turia & Kant at Kritik der Kreativitaet, here are the contents in *.pdf.

Raunig, Gerald / Wuggenig, Ulf (Ed.) (2007) Kritik der Kreativitaet. republicart 6. Wien: Turia & Kant

Human v2.0

2007-08-16T18:41:00.001+02:00

Ich moechte Interesenten anbieten, Texte zum Thema Singularitaet in Bezug zu Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie einzuschicken. Bitte editiert, redigiert und im *.doc, sowie *.pdf Format. Die gesammelten Texte sollen in einem Journal im Jahr 2008 veroeffentlicht werden: Titel der Publikation: A. L. J. mit Schwerpunkt Singularitaet. Die ausschliesslich elektronische Publikation ermoeglicht es AutorInnen, Gedanken zum Themenbereich in deutscher, englischer oder franzoesischer Sprache zu publizieren. Im Anschluss kann ich mir eine virtuelle Konferenz zum Thema vorstellen. Live Chats oder Videochats koennen Teilnehmende miteinander verbinden, die individuelle Location waere also nicht wesentlich. Bitte weitersagen: http://members.chello.at/asfiles

I would like to offer you the opportunity to publish texts on Singularity and Anthropology. Please edit and send in *.doc and *.pdf formats. I would like to publish an electronic journal in 2008: A. L. J. on Singularity. Authors may therefore publish their thoughts on Singularity in relation to Social and Cultural Anthropology in English, French or German. Probably things become so interesting, that a Conference about this field might be set up, providing chat and video chats. Please spread widely: http://members.chello.at/asfiles

1 Open Journal Services: OJS is a software bundle to publish monthly, quarterly or yearly journals on behalf of interest. The GNU Licence allows to alter configuration and to distribute scientific work widely.

2 Open Conference Services: OCS is a kind of conference server implementation including lots of tools to deploy and manage papers and articles.

Amber, Sybil: Curriculum Vitae
A. L. J. Blog: http://anthropologicjournals.blogspot.com
PKP Software & Services: http://pkp.sfu.ca/software_and_services

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

WAVEs

2007-08-02T12:54:00.001+02:00

Today I would like to ask your attention to WAVE. WAVE is a network located in Europe, the acronym means Women Against Violence in Europe. This organization

"The organization's core task is to co-ordinate the WAVE Network, to manage the European Info Center Against Violence and to update and attend the database. Principal functions contain the following: to collect and disseminate data on organizations working in the field of violence against women and children and on the applicable legal provisions, prevention programs, campaigns and international activities in this area; to issue publications (newsletters, conference reports, national reports etc.); and to organize and co-ordinate events such as the WAVE Conference and Steering Group meetings."(Wave website 2007-07-31 3:53PM)

The oncoming Conference will take place in Vilnius/Latvia from October 18 - 20, 2007. Discussions focus on a. the quality of work with women and children affected, and b. European ambitions against domestic violence. Victims of domestic violence should contact local authorities, if one of these patterns of violence apply: Physical violence, Psychological violence, Economic violence. To read an explanation, please go to Wave Network: Definition Domestic Violence. If there is to read more, try Fempower, which is the periodical related to this network.

Presumably, everybody experienced violence, therefore international actions are taken to explain, why violence happens, and what it means a. to be a victim of domestic violence, b. to society and c. to prevent it. Various organizations, from small to big, from local and global, interact and exchange research, data and databases, to name just a few. On the one hand psychological support is given to victims, especially to children. On the other hand social workers give lawful help or consult lawyers to do so. Mediation takes effect, when conflicting parties are assisted to return to daily live.

Brogan and Spencer explain referring to a LAFS - study dating back to 1996, that women abused feel more confident and relaxed under specific circumstances of mediation.

"This important research [Note Amber: Legal Aid and Family Services, LAFS, study by Keys Young] indicated that abused women generally experienced less pre-mediation anxiety, a more positive experience of the mediation process and a higher level of satisfaction with agreements where they

had been subject to emotional abuse or one-off physical threats or threats only;
had been separated from their ex-partners for a considerable time;
had received personal counselling (as opposed to relationship counselling);
reported that they no longer felt intimidated by their ex-partner; and
felt confident in their legal advice and knew what they could reasonably expect from settlement;

and where mediators

asked specific questions about violence or abuse, including non-physical types;
offered women specific guidance in considering the possible impact of violence and abuse on the mediation process;
offered women separate time with the mediator before, during and after sessions;
worked as gender-balanced co-mediation team;
demonstrated that they understood the woman`s concerns both within and outside the mediation session by implementing specific strategies to deal with these concerns;
demonstrated they could control abusive behaviour within the session; and
assisted women to deal with any harassment and intimidation which occurred outside the actual mediation sessions itself..." (Brogan / Spencer 2006: 133)

The authors Brogan and Spencer additionally offer The Theory and Philosophy of Mediation in chapter three of the book, wherein Neutrality is a central concept and discussed pages 91 - 99. They conclude

"Neutrality may be said to be `a lack of bias´ towards or against a party (impartiality), or the use of bias to balance power between the parties (equidistance)." (Brogan / Spencer 2006: 91)

The following chapter analyzes difficulties in practicing concepts of neutrality. Various Internet sites and services and this book serve primarily to understand what might happen to women and children, who live in abusive relationships. Social workers, psychologists and mediators will not only listen, they will also try to explain and analyze what was going on.

Reference

AOEF: http://www.aoef.at

Brogan, Michael / Spencer, David (2006) Mediation Law and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press

GEWALTLOS 2 (2007) Newsletter der Informationsstelle gegen Gewalt, 7/31/2007 11:15 AM. Wien: AOEF

WAVE Network: http://www.wave-network.org

Quote of the Day:
The enraged colonists were mad.
--CJ's US History Work

Technorati Tags: women, gender, violence

del.icio.us Tags: women, gender, violence

Bid

2007-07-29T21:25:00.001+02:00

This is my introduction for the bid of your vote. Not a political party, no: Just help me blog for a year. This means: You give me your vote, the more votes might make a winner.

I am Sybil Amber living in Vienna. I study Social and Cultural Anthropology. When I was small, I used to talk to my daddy as soon as he came home. He answered all my questions, that I collected the whole day. We talked about his music, which was Jazz. I learned about the when´s and why´s of Jazz music. I learned about slavery, despair, illness and death, things human beings did to human beings. I developed an interest for what human beings would do to each other, by asking for the reasons of their behavior. Thoughts, ideas and what human beings would do in the course of their lives to communicate with each other and what they would do to create their kind of societies, this was – and still is – what occupied my thoughts and reflections.

Yes, I thought about the reasons why I study Social and Cultural Anthropology. I remember having posed questions over and over, all day long. Whatever I heard or what was said, I commented. What stayed until today is for instance:

The Black people were stolen from Africa, they were made slaves and had to live in this metal huts in summer. Sixty degrees in the hut and fifty on the cotton field.

Well, do have to say more than this: I painted myself all Black. I used shoepaste or water color. I learned, that all the Jazz songs have a meaning, deeper than the ocean, that was left behind. Please read the Strange Fruit lyrics for it. Billie Holiday, the All-American Girl, sung about the

Strange fruit hanging on a poppy tree - ...

Poppy tree has a special meaning, most of the lyrics texts write poplar tree. People are discussing lots about where this word Jazz comes from. Thanks to my -our - daddy, always.

I´m going to research about this early Jazz: If you want to contribute your opinion and views, please feel free to mail me!

Please support idea: Anthropology for Kids

2007-07-29T20:54:00.001+02:00

I carry this idea along with me, years now, I end up copying book for my nephews: Is there anyone out to support my work concerning an Anthropology for children and youth? Ideas anyone?

For instance: Collecting texts would be nice, by i. e. James Cook , editing them and adding maps and pictures. I already have bought some of these texts, like i. e. Johann R. Forster´s diary - in German. Perhaps we can start the project collaborating with the museum? I mean including professionals? Having theme evenings, later? Build games (I can´t)?

Basically I think about writing how this science evolved: Diaries and travel journals might be too long, but "short cuts" for children and youth - various editions for 5 - 10, and 10 - 15 and 15 - 18 year olds - including, for smaller ones, lots of maps, pictures and sketches, and explanations would do.

Please mail me at anthropology (at) chello (dot) at

Columbus Bordbuch: Christopher Columbus Bordbuch (German / Deutsch)

Technorati Tags: children, youth, sailors

del.icio.us Tags: children, youth, sailors

Culture and the Unconscious

2007-07-29T20:47:00.001+02:00

This book was newly acquired by "our" librarian Dr. Erika Neuber (she has a few prefixes more). I grabbed it from the Institute´s library, when it was in the Newly Acquired section. First I did not know what to begin with it, since I am a sceptic and critical person. I respect, of course, the science psychology, but the question was: How would I accept a Western (1) scientific approach, namely the psychological one, to worldwide cultures? Wouldn´t this rather support - you name it! - euro-centric argumentation?

Three parts divide the book into fields, wherein articles are collected: The Introduction by Michael Rustin makes clear, that this book came from a series of conferences to focus on "different ways of thinking about the relations between Culture and the Unconscious" (Rustin 2007: 1). Rustin explains differing understandings of the unconscious from the view of psychoanalysis and creative artists´work. He refers Part 1 to the dialogue of various ways to inform each other, namely the academic psychoanalysis and cultural practices. Part 2 deals with the symbolization of trauma in artistic unconscious mental processes. Part 3 reflects clinical practitioners approach to works of art and their production.

In Part1 Psychoanalysis and Culture. Historical and Theoretical Encounters the reader finds six chapters:

1 A City of Souls and the Soul of a City: Alfred Doeblin and the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute: This chapter was written by Veronika Fuechtner, who studied German literature, media, history and political science in Marburg and Berlin.
2 A New Naturalism: On the origins of Psychoanalysis as a Social Theory of Subjectivity by Karl Figlio
3 The Unconscious and the Other: Rescue, Inclusivity and the Eroticization of Difference in 1930s Vienna by Mica Nava
4 Psychoanalysis and Culture in Secular Times by Michael Rustin
5 Thinking Art and Psychoanalysis
6 Michel de Certeau and the Possibilities of Psychoanalytic Cultural Studies by Ben Highmore

Part 2: Culture and Trauma as Working Through makes up an Introduction and four chapters:

7 Everything to play for: Masculinity, Trauma and the Pleasures of DVD Technologies by Caroline Bainbridge and Candida Yates. This chapter analyzes DVD cinema consumption in relation to technological progress often related to masculinity.
8 Landscape after Ruins by Phil Cohen
9 "Father, Can´t You See I´m Burning?" Trauma, Ethics and the Possibility of Community in J M. Coetzee´s Age of Iron Sam Durrant
10 Film, Feminism and Melanie Klein: "Weird Lullabies" by Suzy Gordon

Part3: The View from the Clinic, again an Introduction peers five chapters:

11 Reality and Unreality in Fact and Fiction by Ronald Britton
12 The Idealization of a Lost Object in Juliette and in Clinical Work by Debbie Hindle and Susie Godsil
13 Grief in the Mother´s Eyes: A Search for Identity by Marguerite Reid
14 Forever Young: Not Psychoanalysing Bob Dylan
15 Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Dionysiac and the Apollonian in Euripide´s Bacchae by David Bell

Finally, the Conclusion: Clinical and Academic Psychoanalytic Criticism authored by Susannah Radstone offers an explicit view on the Differences that Matter! Radstone goes back to Freud to start with statement, that "psychoanalysts have continued to write on culture and the arts" (Radstone 2007: 242). ___________________________________________________________________________________________

(1) Please refer to Maurice Godelier´s critique on the Western model of society

Bainbridge, Caroline / Susannah Radstone / Rustin, Michael / Yates, Candida (Editors) (2007) Culture and the Unconscious. London: Palgrave Macmillan

del.icio.us Tags: anthropology, ethnology, humanbeings, psych

Technorati Tags: anthropology, ethnology, psych, humanbeings, art

Homo floriensis?

2007-07-20T19:44:00.000+02:00

Is the hobbit a new human species or nothing more than a modern human with a crippling deformity? On the far-flung island of Flores, in ... all » the Indonesian archipelago, a team of archaeologists happened upon a tiny 18,000-year old skeleton. It was no more than a metre tall. They assumed they have found the remains of a young girl. But other signs suggested she was in fact much older. They had discovered one of the smallest human adults ever found (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6994801023942378577&hl=en)

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Notebook & Heat

2007-07-20T13:21:00.000+02:00

~~Just in case one does not have a cooler at hand, try to apply this: Take your pencil case, empty it, put the ice cubes in, close, and place it directly under your Laptop.~~

~~See, how it works:~~

A little paper under the box makes it lasting longer.
P. S. Security Tip: Don´t wait for the Ueberschwemmerung, change ice cubes in time.
P. S. Gerd said, "Don´t do this! Condensed water will collect under the Laptop, and circuits might be affected."

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Tribal Resolutions on Climate Change From Alaska Native Tribes & Villages

2007-07-10T14:05:00.000+02:00

National Indian Law Library -- News: Tribal Resolutions on Climate Change From Alaska Native Tribes & Villages
NARF: Tribal leaders presented 162 Tribal and Corporate Resolutions to the Alaska Delegation on Climate Change Crisis Day. The NARF´s library offers media relating to tribal laws and law resources. The National Indian Law Library has archives online, assistance for research is given via a request form or phone. The news section provides catalogued overviews to several fields, like Culture and Tradition, Education, Environment and Energy, or Economic Development. There is a concise link list connecting to
1 Indianz.com,
2 Indian Country Today,
3 IMDiversity,
4 Native News Online,
and more. Tip: Please see Yahoo! Groups to find discussion and special interest.

Anthropology and Environment on A. L. J. Additionally, AnthroSpace Channel provides the AnthroSpace Group referring to American Native history.

Artist 4 Africa

2007-07-09T19:26:00.000+02:00

CIA: The World Factbook 2007

2007-07-07T15:33:00.000+02:00

CIA: The World Factbook 2007 is available online. The *.zip files contain websites, which can be stored on the Computer, varying sizes are given for bandwidths. The Factbook is updated on a bimonthly basis. Various publications are offered.

EthnoFeed

2007-07-01T17:28:00.000+02:00

Die ambitionierte Seite bietet eine Reihe von Mitschriften der StudentInnen an der Universiatet Wien, Institut Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie.
This site delivers Social and Cultural Anthropology PDF in German. These are lecture notes written by students to download freely. By and by, new files are added, two sections make up different phases in CSA studies. Some papers are longer, some are reduced to information and data. This is a helpful tool to complete one´s own notes.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Vienna Anthro Map

2007-06-30T18:03:00.000+02:00

Vienna Anthro Map:

Bibliotheques, the Museum of Anthropology and Vienna archives. I thought this one might be of help for students and visitors to Vienna. I was looking for the museum library´s address, recently: The museum is being renovated, nobody knew where the interim entrance to the library was. One of the officers there took me to the Director´s office, an assistant finally explained, that at the back of the house, there I was to get what I was searching for. Suggestions are welcome!

Ethnomusicology

2007-06-29T18:45:00.000+02:00

What an incident! Joe Zawinul´s Syndicate is out and about again. I have collected some Jazz vids, old and new, like Weather Report´s music, and a short history about how Jazz evolved in America out of slavery, poverty, dispair, sickness, depression, and diaspora:

In Professor Kubik´s book Africa and the Blues the student learns:

"Historically oriented research on the blues embraces several disparate areas of inquiry:
1. The study of musical, literary, and social factors leading in the late nineteenth century to the grdual development of a new, distinct genre of accompanied solo song in rural areas of the South - a genre that would later be labeled `blues`.
2. The study of the remote history of this previously unnamed genre´s musicostructural and literary characteristics with regard to their origins in African and other cultures.
3. The study of the developments and changes that took place in the blues after the first publication of sheet music versions in 1912 and commercial gramophone records beginning in 1920.
4. The study of influences exerted by the blues and its contemporary rural and urban derivatives upon other types of American music and upon other musical cultures of the world from the 1920s to the present." (Kubik 1999: 3)

Kubik, Gerhard (1999) Africa and the Blues. U. S. A.: University Press of Mississippi

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Visual Anthropology

2007-06-29T18:09:00.000+02:00

This engaging website called Ethnodoc is promoted via VisualAnthropology.net, a source providing tools, festival data, news about visual culture. The website can be read in French, English, Italian, Portugese, Spanish and German, most of the texts are in English, though. I especially like the books and library sections, registering with Ethnodoc or VisualAnthropology.net delivers even more data to the mighty consumer. Calls for contributions mix with calls for papers, finally here is the upcoming International Documentary Film Festival located in Florence.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

LingoPad

2007-06-28T21:22:00.000+02:00

Diese sehr nuetzliche Software wurd vom Computermagazin c´t vorgeschlagen, die Lexika werden permanent erweitert: LingoPad. This software is free to use, contributors expand dictionaries, permanently. Currently, there are world in Arabian - English, English - German, or German - Khasi, available. The team offers support for offline use, here. Other projects to translate are i. e. the All Free Dictionaries project or FreeDict. Different platforms are supported, this is the link to the English version: URL: http://www.ego4u.com/en/lingopad

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

America´s Highway: Oral Histories of Route 66

2007-06-26T14:20:00.000+02:00

America´s Highway: This supervised work about a part of America´s history includes maps, pictures and interviews. The authors and researchers Jay Crim and Shekar Davarya drove across Route 66 to collect data from Chicago to Santa Monica. Various interviews illustrate the history and being on Route 66, from east to west. The authors give instructions how to find places, like original sections of Route 66, or where to sleep in a wigwam. Photos show graffittis or old gas stations, and a Cadillac Ranch, which was installed by a the millionaire Stanley Marsh.

Thru Out The World: warehouse of artifacts

2007-06-26T10:57:00.000+02:00

Thru Out The World: warehouse of artifacts: This is a videolist dedicated to art work. I update at least one month, suggestions are welcome. With this channel on YouTube I try to find art related videos. I thought this was a good idea to hear about art and an easy way to deliver art experience. Of course, the questions arises about what is an art video and whose videos would be eligible: I started with little gems, I found inspiration, too. The warehouse of artifacts represents the idea of random found objects in the internet, these obejcts are listed like in a warehouse, but they cannot be bought by itself. These objets trouves were not posted to be sold on purpose, they are published by individuals, who want to find a bigger audience to expose their art related work. Classics, like Yoko Ono´s vids, are added because of their singularity. Please feel free to notify me about your video.

2007-06-06T15:21:00.000+02:00

To use these badges, download them to your computer and upload them individually.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Fairness

2007-06-04T09:31:00.000+02:00

This list of friendly restaurants and shopping malls was created by BIZEPS and DSA Manfred Srb. BIZEPS is a group to support disabled people. They publish news on their site, here is an article about the ENAR, short for European Network Against Racism, publication on Multiple Discrimination. This Fact Sheet defines issues of discrimination to differ multiple, compound and intersectional discrimination. There is a paper available written by Timo Makkonen, explaining this three dimensional approach, plus examples.

The NCDDR provides a systematic registry, having published Essays and Overviews. In the course of my studies I wrote Loon (PDF 183KB), a study relating to Disability Research. The text (in German) describes social perception by disabled people.

Goodman, Alan H. / Heath, Deborah / Lindee, Susan M. (2003): Genetic Nature/Culture. Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture Divide. U. S. A.: University of California Press

del.icio.us Tags: disability, research, humandiversity, fairness

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Ausstellung: Benin - Koenige und Rituale

2007-05-20T17:09:00.000+02:00

Eine sehr empfehlenswerte Ausstellung findet im Museum fuer Voelkerkunde statt. Dieser kleine Leopard aus Elfenbein, aber auch Masken, Bronzen oder Schmuck werden ausgestellt. Das Photographieren ist ohne Blitz erlaubt, im Museumsshop koennen diverse Repliken erworben werden. Bis 3. September 2007 taeglich - ausser dienstags - von 10:00 Uhr an.

Auf der neu gestalteten Webseite des Museums finden sich einige, grundlegende Informationen zur Ausstellung: http://www.ethno-museum.ac.at. Sehr interessant zu betrachten sind die Videos, die zum Abschluss der Ausstellung gezeigt werden. Die Technologie des Metallgusses wird Schritt fuer Schritt und gut nachvollziehbar dargestellt.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Poverty Research: Cluster 1

2007-04-19T15:53:00.000+02:00

http://www.irp.wisc.edu/
http://www.jcpr.org

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

juridikum: Rechtsanthropologie

2007-03-26T13:44:00.000+02:00

Juridikum, die zeitschrift im rechtsstaat, veroeffentlichte im Jahr 2005 die Ausgabe Nummer 4 mit dem Schwerpunktthema Rechtsanthropologie. Beitraege bieten eine Uebersicht der rechtsanthropologischen Forschungen mit ausfuehrlichen (!) Fussnoten. Gerade die Kuerze der Artikel finde ich als Einleitung und gestraffte Uebersicht fuer StudentInnen interessant, weil so die "grossen Umrisse" komprimiert gezeigt werden koennen.
Unter dieser Link ist das Inhaltsverzeichnis des Einzelheftes gelistet: Juridikum

juridikum nr. 4. 2005. Verlag Oesterreich. ISSN 1019-5394

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

I want to be a Scientist: Write or Cherish

2007-02-14T19:42:00.000+01:00

I´m a working poor. Yesterday I was browsing money matters. Some institutions provide infos about projects. I switched to a much more interesting site, referring to magazines and papers for Ethnology / Social and Cultural Anthropology. This is the perfect service, unless one doesn´t ask for AAA. Universities connect for a student´s comfiment at the Epaper service. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) may be established, therefore Computers outside the U reserve an IP address to access Epapers marked with a yellow point. Sage has special offers these days, reading Current Anthropology, Anthropology Today and the free issue of Anthropological Theory is widening perspectives of (or on? about?) the subject.

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Studiengebuehren und Sozialdienst

2007-01-15T14:26:00.000+01:00

Wie ich auf der Seite des Ministeriums ersehen kann, scheinen seit 2004 keine Updates erfolgt zu sein:

Daher ist auf der Seite unter dieser Link zu lesen, wie hoch und fuer wen der Studienbeitrag zu entrichten sei: http://www.bmbwk.gv.at/studienbeitrag. Man duerfte also auch im Ministerium von neuen Entwicklungen, dem Gusenbauer - Modell und einer Erhoehung der Gebuehren ab 1. 1. 2008, wenig wissen. Konkrete Asukuenfte erfaehrt die/der Studierende nicht. Die OeH informiert jedoch genau, in den Pressemitteilungen nimmt man kurz zur gestrigen Sendung "offen gesagt" (ORF 2007-01-14) Stellung: OeH zur Studiengebuehrenerhoehung. Interessant in der Sendung die Kommentare des Moderators zum Thema Demonstrationen, ob denn diese Sinn haetten! Ihm scheint entgangen zu sein, dass dieses Recht lange erkaempfte werden musste und von Menschen als Mittel politischer Agitation wahrgenommen wird. Sozialminister Buchinger, wohl weislich als Vertreter der Regierung mit Wissenschafts- und BildungsministerInnen geschickt, formulierte wiederholt "Schritte in die richtige Richtung". Er meinte, ein Anfang zur Veraenderung in Richtung sozialer Gerechtigkeit waere gemacht. Ja, aber,die SPOe ist doch keine Anfaengerpartei, die zum erstem Mal in der Regierung vertreten ist, wieso denn so zaghaft?

Vor der Wahl zu behaupten Studiengebuehren abzuschaffen, nach der Wahl ein Kompensationsmodell fuer OeVP - orientierte Wirtschaftsinteressen? Billig Arbeitsplaetze schaffen, Arbeitslosen somit den Weg in neue Jobs versperren, billige Arbeitskraefte - sind das Aktionen gegen Intellektuelle? Sollen dann nur noch Eliten studieren? Oder sind das Ersatzbefriedigungsmassnahmen Konservativer?

© Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006

Copernic Agent: "Mundial Upheaval Society"

2007-01-12T18:42:00.000+01:00

Search Results
Search: Mundial Upheaval Society
Category: The Web
Matches: 11 result(s)

Date: 12.01.2007 18:41:02
Search mode: All the words
Sorted by: Title ascending

ANTHROPOLOGIST BIOGRAPHIES - Wolf
At Columbia, he formed a study group called the "Mundial upheaval Society" with Morton Fried, Elman Service, Stanley Diamond, Sidney Mintz, Daniel McCall ...
http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory_pages/Wolf.htm - 87%
Result found by: AOL Search, Netscape Netcenter

Anthropology at Columbia: A reminiscence
formed the Mundial Upheaval Society. which was devoted to study of the litera-. ture of political economy; they included. Stanley Diamond, Morton Fried, ...
http://www.springerlink.com/index/J875368J105221W6.pdf - 61%
Result found by: AOL Search, Netscape Netcenter

Eric Wolf
... he formed a study group called the "Mundial upheaval Society" with Morton Fried, Elman Service, Stanley Diamond, Sidney Mintz, ...
http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/wolf.htm - 92%
Result found by: Lycos, Ask.com, AltaVista, FAST Search (alltheweb.com), Yahoo!

eulogy at San Juan, thatappeared in the NewsletteroftheAssocia ...
"Mundial Upheaval Society" or M.U.S., they read and dis-. cussed texts influenced by Marxist theory: Karl Wittfo-. gel's Oriental Despotism, Paul Sweezy's ...
http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1999.101.2.395 - 55%
Result found by: AOL Search, Netscape Netcenter

free information free software and revolution
The political upheaval of people will create demand for participative democracy ... whole organization in question, including society as a whole, benefits. ...
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=10336 - 48%
Result found by: AltaVista, Yahoo!

human civilization and even life itself. If the 21st century ...
Wolf, formed a study group that they dubbed the Mundial. Upheaval Society (M.U.S. for short), held their own. weekly seminars, andread anddiscussed each ...
http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1999.101.1.161 - 48%
Result found by: AOL Search, Netscape Netcenter

JSTOR: A Conversation with Eric Wolf
[ed: Mundial Upheaval Society] EW: Yes, I think that was enormously productive. We really learned an awful lot from each other. ...
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-0496(198705)14%3A2%3C346%3AACWEW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G - 74%
Result found by: AOL Search, Netscape Netcenter

JSTOR: Morton Herbert Fried (1923-1986)
... in a study group that called itself the Mundial Upheaval Society (M.U.S.). ... Fried, Morton H. 1953 Fabric of Chinese Society. New York: Praeger. ...
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294(198803)2%3A90%3A1%3C148%3AMHF(%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K - 81%
Result found by: AOL Search, Netscape Netcenter

Literature and Movies
... dubbed the Mundial Upheaval Society (M.U.S. for short) ... group which called itself Mundial Upheaval Society (MUS) clearly wanted to épater le bourgeois. ...
http://www.stanford.edu/group/wais/Literature/literature_04252004.htm - 85%
Result found by: Lycos, Ask.com, AltaVista, FAST Search (alltheweb.com), Yahoo!

Miscellaneous Obituaries of Anthropologists
II, Service entered Columbia's graduate program where he was the senior member of a group of graduate students styled the Mundial Upheaval ...
http://www.obitcentral.com/obitsearch/obits/misc/anthro9.htm - 81%
Result found by: Lycos, Ask.com

Public Anthropology
Service began his impulse to "combat inequality rather than study it" by forming the Mundial Upheaval Society to which he later became a senior member.
http://www.publicanthropology.org/Archive/Aa1999.htm - 76%
Result found by: AltaVista, Yahoo!, MSN Web Search

Anthropological Search Engine

2007-01-12T18:36:00.000+01:00

I have added this anthropological search engine http://search.live.com/macros/sybilamber/anthrosearch today.