Anthropology in the digital worlds [2]

Earlier this week I organised a lecture by a Professor of Anthropology on ethnographic methods for doctoral researchers across other disciplines. I stayed for the full session myself too. As I have said on this blog repeatedly already, my attitude towards anthropology is like that of a fangirl. I admit that must have a lot to do with my romanticised idea of the discipline. Nevertheless, my suspicions were confirmed when the professor said that anthropologists have a special relationship with ethnographic methods, feeling that they *own* the methods, even though the methods are now popularly used in many other disciplines too. (In fact on several occasions he used “anthropological methods” and “ethnographic methods” interchangeably.) And it broke my heart a little when he described anthropology as distinct from studies of texts, archives, and … the internet. It didn’t seem that anyone was bothered by that split-second remark, but to me it felt like someone closed the door on me – a door to a cool club that I was snooping around, hoping to be invited in.

Anyway, it was a fantastic talk and I was able to take away many gems of reading suggestions.

• Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (Bronislaw Malinowski, 1922) – especially the introduction.
• Writing Culture (James Clifford & George E. Marcus, 1986/2010).
• Enforcing Order (Didier Fassin, 2013).
• The Political Biography of an Earthquake: Aftermath and Amnesia in Gujarat, India (Edward Simpson, 2014).
• The Bachelors’ Ball: The Crisis of Peasant Society in Béarn (Pierre Bourdieu, 2007).
• The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Pierre Bourdieu et al., 2000) – especially the interview sections.
• The history of Bhuj as told by its own historians (Edward Simpson & Kai Kresse, 2007).
• Fieldwork and the perception of everyday life (Timothy Jenkins, 1994).
• Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International (Stephen Hopgood, 2006).
• The anthropology of international development (David Mosse, 2013).

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Thesis Psychosis [4]

Saw a YouTube video of this song on a random blog many years ago. I liked it, but after that blog disappeared I couldn’t recall for the life of me the singer’s name. So, the video became one of those things that I don’t think about at all most of the time but when it spring to my mind out of the blue I will do some obsessive searching for in vain and leave until the next time it happens. Or to be more factual, one of my many digital objects of procrastination.

Then last week it just came back – equally out of the blue. Not the very same rendition but I take it.

Déjà vu, déjà entendu [6]

Hate to find this kind of thing being a global commonality… https://t.co/CTVS9wEKfC https://t.co/1JdtZTxjba

— yawningtree (@yawningtree) February 13, 2019

And neighbours, why do we never fail to share this kind of thing… https://t.co/3S2G2mZbm5 https://t.co/CyTLaByEOK

— yawningtree (@yawningtree) March 12, 2019

Lost in translation

Whelks caught in Wales are South Korean ‘aphrodisiac’ (Neil Prior, BBC News, 10 February 2019)

👆 You are witnessing how an ‘urban legend‘ is born. An ‘Othered’ one at that. Whelks are not considered as aphrodisiac in Korea. It is a horrendous slang word to refer to women who have passed out on date rape drugs.

Computer says so. [2]

Couldn’t get this out of my head either. Also remembered this clip where a 72-year-old vlogger, Korea Grandma, was grappling with a self-service kiosk at a McDonald’s.

RT @AskAKorean This image haunted me for this seollal. On the crowded LNY trains, all the old people are in the standing seats because they can’t figure out how to book tickets online […] (5 February 2019)

LNY is a big holiday, so lots of Koreans travel home. Train tix for LNY sells out within minutes of being available for sale. And most of them are snapped up online. If you don’t know how to book tickets online, like many old people are, you are often out of luck.

The article describes old folks who show up to the train station hours early just so they can have a shot at buying train tickets. When they’re lucky enough to do so, they are often relegated to standing tickets. Hence, the messed up trains where only the old people stand.

S Korea is the most wired society in the world, and it often decides to simply let people who can’t keep up stay behind and suffer. I hate seeing this type of scene happening again and again.

Happy Korean New Year [3]

Had a shaky start to 2019. Was down with the flu early January and I was out of commission for a week. It was a record in a sense. In the past, even when I was unwell, I didn’t usually take more than one day off, and I would still check my work inbox occasionally throughout that day. This time I was barely able to sit up, let alone move around, for one whole week. So I ended up doing nothing but drinking lots of tea and water while watching, in a half-asleep state, the full series of Parks and Recreation for the first time. The lesson of all this might have been that I am no longer that youthful version of me.

Anyhoo, because of this ordeal, I didn’t get to make any New Year’s resolutions. However, a good thing about being from a lunar calendar culture is that there is a second chance!

Well, actually, my resolutions are always the same: less sugar, less screen time on commute, and sleep earlier. Always these same ones, always failing to keep them, and always rolling them over to the next year. As a desperate measure, I have turned to audiobooks — something I would never have imagined myself doing. I don’t even like ebooks that much, so this is a pretty big leap for me. I am pleasantly surprised so far with this new commuting experience — but don’t confuse my new found love for audiobooks with how I feel about commuting.

Most importantly, happy Korean New Year!

13 minutes

Online consequences of being offline: A gendered tale from South Korea

A 13-minute read. Took me forever to write.

Another day, another life hack

Today my news feeds are marked by a new Gillette ad on ‘toxic masculinity‘, the #BrexitVote in the House of Commons, and a new Netflix show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. Among these equally significant topics, one that has created most buzz, at least in my little social media bubbles, is the so-called KonMari method. We don’t have Netflilx at home, but I gather that her approach to books does not bode well with my friends and colleagues. Apparently she has said that books are first to go when decluttering the house and that the ideal number of books to own is less than 30. Hmmm. What is this familiar feeling? Right, this feels almost like the time when I was shown a picture of books arranged by the colours of their covers.

Konmari or tsundoku? The unbearable lightness of getting rid of books (Sue Carter, The Star, 11 January 2019)

Then once again the answer was right under my nose.

Start writing a book. https://t.co/98YIJVJ54z

— Isaac Fitzgerald🤞🏻🖤 (@IsaacFitzgerald) December 27, 2018

The future we were promised [3]

35 years ago, Isaac Asimov was asked by the Star to predict the world of 2019. Here is what he wrote (The Star, 27 December 2018)

If we look into the world as it may be at the end of another generation, let’s say 2019 […], three considerations must dominate our thoughts: 1. Nuclear war. 2. Computerization. 3. Space utilization.

Interesting to read this in conjunction with the news about China’s successful landing on the “far side of the Moon” today (and their potato-growing mission).

In the meantime, here’s another one. Let it sink in.

Blade Runner was set in this year. pic.twitter.com/N8akP9DCNq

— Jamie Bartlett (@JamieJBartlett) January 1, 2019

For future archaeologists

I have come across these two threads separately, but in my mind they make a perfect pair. *chef’s kiss*

Wonder what phrases from today will be used in 100 years as figures of speech, when the tech has changed & no-one even remembers what a smartphone was.

‘Ethel, that document you sent over is so right swipe’

‘The kind of person who retweets himself’

‘What a ‘grammable vista!’

— Jamie Bartlett (@JamieJBartlett) September 27, 2018

I wonder sometimes what would be the oldest extant word based on technology no longer in use. Taping an interview? Dialing someone? https://t.co/rtwiYJ9f6t

— Marcin Wichary (@mwichary) December 31, 2018

They also remind me of the “3d printed save icon” and “a computer that prints while you type and you don’t have to plug in” jokes, as well as the Onion’s “ruins of ‘Friendster’ civilisation” video and David Macaulay’s illustrated book Motel of the Mysteries (1979).