Category: updates and publications

Call for anthropological expertise on Harley-Davidson motorcycles and American culture

I am looking for an anthropologist in the Washington D.C. area who can speak to me about American culture and Harley-Davidson motorcycles. I work for a documentary film company called Kensington Communications, and we are producing a series called Museum Secrets. It is broadcast through History Television, National Geographic, BBC World, and others.

In each episode we feature a different world famous museum focusing on a few select artifacts in their collection. Our current episode is on the Smithsonian where they have several Harley-Davidson’s.

We are interested in doing a story about one of the bikes where we would look at the motorcycle’s history and the distinctive features of the bike (its sound, for instance), but also use the artifact as a way into the bigger story of Harley-Davidson’s influence on American society.

Ideally we are seeking someone who has looked at the culture of Harley-Davidson enthusiasts, but anyone who has studied American popular culture and can speak about the influence of motorcycles on American society will also be of interest.

I can call any interested anthropologists at their convenience to explain the project in more detail. I can be reached by telephone at 416-504-0001, ext. 236 or by e-mail seann@kensingtontv.com

This website should provide you with a sense of the approach to the series: http://www.museumsecrets.tv

Seann Gallagher
Museum Secrets
Kensington Communications
416-504-0001, ext. 236
445 Adelaide St. W.
Toronto,  Ontario
Canada
M5V 1T1

Anthroworks best 40 dissertations in cultural anthropology 2011

Anthroworks presents its favorite 2011 North American dissertations in cultural anthropology. In compiling this list, I searched the “Dissertations International” electronic database that is available through my university library. The database includes mainly U.S. dissertations with a light sprinkling from Canada. I used the same search terms as I did in previous years.

True confession: these are my picks, and they reflect my preferences for topics — health, inequality, migration, gender, and human rights. Somebody else’s picks would look quite different. But this is the anthroworks list!

The 40 dissertations are arranged in alphabetical order according to the last name of the dissertation author. Apologies to the authors for my reduction of their published abstracts to a maximum of nine lines.

I would like to convey my congratulations to all 2011 anthropology Ph.D. recipients. I hope they go on to a successful career in — or related to — anthropology.

An Analysis of Cultural Competence, Cultural Difference, and Communication Strategies in Medical Care, by Marisa Abbe. Case Western Reserve University. Advisor: Atwood Gaines.

This research expands the knowledge of the role of language, culture, and cultural difference in medical encounters. Minority populations suffer disproportionately from the burden of disease in American society. A common reason cited for health inequalities is that the U.S. health care system, in its “one-size-fits-all” approach, is inadequate to meet the needs of minority patients. A proposed solution in biomedicine is cultural competence. This dissertation investigates how Anglo-American clinicians and Mexican immigrant patients communicate in a medical setting. It is based on ethnographic research at the People’s Clinic, a free clinic in a metropolitan area in Texas. I examine how patients communicate information and whether their narratives cause barriers to treatment. I propose ways to redefine cultural competence of medical practitioners.

We Are Phantasms: Female Same-Sex Desires, Violence, and Ideology in Salvador, Brazil, by Andrea Allen. Harvard University. Advisor: Michael Herzfeld.

In this dissertation, I explore the paradox of lesbian intimate partner violence in Salvador, Brazil. My ethnographic fieldwork allows me to examine how lesbians and other women with female lovers act against “state interests” through their involvement in romantic and sexual relationships with other women, but nonetheless reproduce dominant Brazilian cultural norms through their involvement in intimate partner violence and sexual power relations. I focus on four themes: social violence perpetrated against lesbians in Brazilian society; women’s same-sex desires and sexual practices; infidelity, jealousy, and intimate partner violence in lesbian relationships; and the government’s response to intimate partner violence within Brazil.

An Ambivalent Embrace: The Cultural Politics of Arabization and the Knowledge Economy in the Moroccan Public School, by Charis Boutieri. Princeton University. Advisors: Abdellah Hammoudi, Lawrence Rosen.

This dissertation is based on fieldwork in urban Moroccan high schools. I explore the relationship between Arabization (post-Independence nationalizing agenda) and public education. I argue that tensions traversing the public school relate to Morocco’s ambivalent cultural politics in the postcolonial period and to the social fragmentation this cultural politics has encouraged. Through classroom observations, discussions with students, teachers and parents and curricula analysis, I trace the Arabized school’s ambiguous bilingualism between French and Arabic and narrate how school participants encounter their colonial heritage as re-articulated in the discourse of development. These dynamics reconfigure the school from a mechanism of social and symbolic engineering to a space where the cultural politics of Morocco is debated.

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Call for book proposals

Deadline: March 1

The California Series in Public Anthropology is continuing its International Competition in 2012. It seeks proposals for short books oriented toward undergraduates that focus on how social scientists are facilitating social change. They are looking for accessible, grounded accounts that present compelling stories, stories that inspire others.

The proposals should describe a book that will be relatively short – around 100 pages – with a personal touch that captures the lives of people. The core of the book should involve stories of one or more social scientists as change agents, as making a difference in the world.

The University of California Press in association with the Center for a Public Anthropology will award publishing contracts for up to three such book proposals independent of whether the manuscripts themselves have been completed. The proposals can describe work the author wishes to undertake in the near future.

Interested individuals should submit a 3-4,000 word overview of their proposed manuscript detailing (a) the problem addressed as well as (b) a summary of what each chapter covers. The proposal should be written in a manner that non-academic readers find interesting and thought-provoking.

Submissions should be emailed to: bookseries@publicanthropology.org with the relevant material enclosed as attachments.

New journal on island cultures

Shima is a peer-refereed journal that is published twice a year in open access online form and as an annual print compendium.

The cultures referred to in the journal’s subtitle refer not only to arts, crafts, language, folklore, media etc. but also aspects of local or inter-local tourism, development, politics and/or religion and how these relate to island and maritime environments and ecologies.

Shima publishes:

–Theoretical and/or comparative studies of island cultures (and/or diasporic island communities)
–Case studies of island cultures
–Accounts of collaborative research and development projects in island cultures
–Analyses of fictional representations of islands and ‘islandness’

Call for papers: Displaced childhoods

Displaced childhoods: Oral history and traumatic experiences
Annual Conference of the Oral History Society at the University of Reading, United Kingdom

When: July 13-14
Deadline: Jan 21

Papers are invited that draw on current projects or recently completed work using oral history and related methods, which address the themes of disrupted and traumatic childhoods.

This conference aims to bring together oral history practitioners in academic, community and therapeutic settings who explore the effects that evacuation, forced migration or long-term separation can have on children. Oral history interviewing is often used to document the experiences and study the long-term psychological and emotional impact of disrupted childhoods as a result of war, conflict, evacuation or natural and civil disasters.

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Call for papers: Anthropology in the world

Anthropology in the World Conference

When: June 8-10
Deadline: January 16

The Royal Anthropological Institute is pleased to announce that a conference ‘Anthropology in the World’ will take place at the British Museum, Clore Centre, in conjunction with the BM Centre for Anthropology. The aim of this conference is to explore the manifold ways in which anthropology in its widest sense has been influential outside academia. It is aimed therefore at having a widespread appeal to the general public and to those anthropologists who are working in careers outside the university. We hope too that it will be of interest to academic anthropologists who are interested in the way that their subject is diffused and used in wider society, and to those students who are interested in applying their anthropological skills outside the academic arena.

For more information, click here.

Call for papers: “Madness” and culture

Transgressive Culture – ‘Madness’ and Culture
Deadline for submission: Feb 19

Transgressive Culture is a new electronic and print peer-reviewed journal and book series published with Gylphi, with an international editorial board that includes Ken Gelder (University of Melbourne) and James Kincaid (University of Southern California). Details of the ‘addiction edition’ can be found here: http://www.gylphi.co.uk/transgressive/index.php.

We invite submissions of critical and creative work within the broad area of ‘Madness’ and Culture. Submissions may wish to consider the following areas – though we are open to ideas from outside this list:
–How should and can madness in the 21st century be conceptualized, and who should be in charge of such conceptualization?
–How madness is represented in new media forms, such as blogs or advertisements?
–How can or does music, literature and the arts transgress traditional or clinical formulations of mad experiences?
–Are service users transgressing and transcending their own experiences through their documentation and reiteration in art and literature?
–How does psychiatry deal with those who transgress the boundaries of The Good Patient?
–To what extent can creativity and madness be delineated as interdependent in the 21st century?
–Does the media continue to play a role in creating and maintaining public perceptions of madness and how should this be addressed in terms of stigma and inequality?
–How are contemporary mental health movements, such as the Recovery movement, reconfigured or represented in literature and culture?

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Ethnographica journal now available

Read the first issue

Ethnographica Journal on Culture and Disability (EJCD) is a new peer-reviewed journal that is grounded in ethnographic research and writing as the principal means of understanding the significations of Dis/Ability. The journal invites scholarly contributions that engage in conceptual dialogues across disciplines in the social sciences and humanities in general, but also in bioethics, and science and technology studies in relation to social and cultural anthropology.

Moreover, the Journal has to be situated in a line of critical thinking, often reflected in terms of ‘models’. The so-called ‘social and cultural models’ are engaged in critical thinking of disability as limited to Western contexts. Therefore EJCD wishes to engage in a spectrum of cross-cultural views, and to document ‘disability’ in both local and global contexts. Last, EJCD is also engaging with the transformation of the self, communities, living spaces and technology resulting from experiences with disability.

Call for papers

The Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education: An International Journal invites contributions for an upcoming guest edited volume on Migration, Religion, and Education.

This special issue invites papers from a diversity of international perspectives and country contexts, and from a variety of education disciplines, to address the theme of migration, religion, and education. Education should be considered broadly to include all stages / levels of formal education, as well as non-formal and informal education.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:
* religion and identity among migrant students
* the “problematization” of religious minority students in host society schools
* representation of migrant’s religions in school curricula
* religious literacy among education policy makers
* religious awareness among teachers and administrators
* religion as a form of cultural capital among migrant students
* religion and migrant teachers
* court decisions bearing on the religious identities and practices of migrant students

Please send abstracts to Bruce Collet colleba@bgsu.edu by February 15, 2012. Responses to submitted abstracts will be sent by April 2012. Full article submissions from invited papers will be due July 1, 2012. Papers invited for the special issue will undergo blind review procedures.

Reviews of relevant books are also encouraged.

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