Flip Video MinoHD
Originally uploaded by TFM
I’ve been using the tiny Flip Video MinoHD (by Pure Digital Technologies) for about a month now. I’ve had a chance to try it in a fieldwork setting (elder interviews) and while traveling on vacation. While I have never had that much interest in doing video (professionally or [...]
A student asked me recently for examples of ethnographies in which the anthropologist ‘had a bad time’. He observed that in all of the anthropological writings he has read, the anthropologists generally present themselves and their experiences positively.
I was stumped. The ethnography for the course, a survey of Canada’s first peoples, [...]
On the heels of my less-than-well-researched post about a free topographical map site — Ed pointed out how to get scanned versions of Canadian National Topographic Series (NTS) maps in the comments — let me point you to a terrific site for uploading GPS tracks and logs and plotting those tracks against all sorts of [...]
Dease Lake Caribou
Originally uploaded by TFM
I spent last week — my reading break — in northwestern British Columbia. It was my first trip back to the area during the winter since I completed my dissertation fieldwork in March of 2003. It was [...]
The Whale Hunt presents Jonathan Harris’ experience among Inuipiat Eskimos of Barrow Alaska in stunning photography and a unique, narrative-driven interface. From Harris’ statement:
The purpose of this project was threefold:
First, to experiment with a new interface for human storytelling. The photographs are presented in a framework that tells the moment-to-moment story of the whale [...]
Two stories from the Globe and Mail in the past couple of days concerning the Mbendjele Yaka (also Pygmies; northern Congo) use of GPS units to document sacred sites and locations of traditional use. The broader context: logging of the Mbendjele Yaka’s forested territory.
To get around the problem of low literacy rates, a system [...]
It has been a long time since I used a consent form in a research setting where I did not know the people I was interviewing. It happened to me recently, however, and reminded me just how uncomfortable consent forms can be especially when they appear within minutes of introductions across a table.
While I [...]
I follow the use of ethnographic methods outside of anthropology with some interest, although without much real understanding of how its non-anthropological purveyors use it. Now, Grant McCracken at ‘This Blog Sits At …’ offers a lengthy and informative summary of the problems of corporate ethnography. The jist:
… some clients are now treating [...]
Lorenz at Anthropologi.info has picked up on a story from The Australian about the reluctance of the National Native Title Tribunal to accept the testimony of anthropologists it deems to have close relationships with aboriginal groups. Quoting the article:
Mr Neate [Tribunal President] said anthropologists and historians had a pivotal role in native title claims, [...]
In the course of a general conversation about methods in various social science disciplines this week, a colleague asked me what stops me from ‘making stuff up’ in my anthropology research.
My immediate response was that there was really nothing to stop me from writing anthropological fiction. I elaborated, however, and suggested that I would [...]
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