ISSN 2562-9948
A collection of random personal thoughts, visions, poetry, etc., the kind of stuff that is usually categorized in common North American parlance as being “out there.”
Here we return to the theme of the previous feature on “reality tourism,” and the promotional materials produced by the Razor’s Edge company. With this, we complete our collection of such videos from 1999. The newest addition features an interview/testimonial, with Robert De Niro in the spotlight as he converses with the Executive VP of […]
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You are on top of the world. And sometimes it feels like that is the problem. That is where we at Razor’s Edge LLC come in to support you. If there is one thing that our many years of business experience have taught us, it’s that finding yourself means finding yourself in someone else’s shoes. […]
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There is something very strange about this US presidential election. There is an air of stress, with bursts of odd comic relief, sliding uncontrollably from the grimly serious to the hysterically hilarious. The last time I personally witnessed such behaviour was at a funeral. And there is something about this election that smells and sounds […]
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“Sometimes,” remarked a wise colleague of mine many years ago, “It seems all I know how to do is critique.” We were postgraduate students, I in anthropology, she in sociology, but our paths crossed several times in the classes of a VFM whose task it was to bathe us in the critical light of dialectics. […]
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This is the first time that I am writing about a subject that has occupied my thoughts numerous times over many years. I have talked with a doctoral student (a filmmaker with years of experience following the lives of “homeless” persons in Toronto) about maybe teaming up to capture bleakness on film, at least that […]
Read More…To be perfectly frank, I am no fan of Margaret Mead. Had she been born a while later, she probably would have been the Senior Social Scientist at the Human Terrain System. I once heard a colleague describe her, in supposedly positive terms, as one of anthropology’s “war horses” –which seems all too true on […]
Read More…Unintended Open Source Ethnography For as much serendipity as conventional, on the ground, ethnography is known to entail, the “approach” discussed here is barely an approach at all: it was unprovoked, unplanned, without coordination, being neither methodical nor systematic. It became a collaboration, out of mutual interest, from distinct and separate positions, but there was […]
Read More…COUNTER-COUNTERINSURGENCY: You’ve heard the criticisms. You’ve read the book. Now see the movie. These are some of my favourite lines: counterinsurgency: it’s like a wild horse, only you bet on it; counterinsurgency involves a thousand small healing steps; the manual can never be wrong, only the practice; cultural knowledge for the military: it’s so basic […]
Read More…Starting next month, I will be joining Al Jazeera as the author of a series of monthly columns, beginning with articles on issues raised here, dealing with soft power, social media, digital activism, and almost certainly something about the Minerva Research Initiative and the Human Terrain System. I am very thankful to Al Jazeera’s editors […]
Read More…It is with great pleasure that, as a member of the steering committee, I announce the formation of ANTHROPOLOGISTS for JUSTICE and PEACE (AJP), a new grouping of Canadian anthropologists, and a partner of the U.S.-based Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA), the Fredericton Peace Coalition, the Centre de ressources sur la non-violence (CRNV), the Collectif […]
Read More…Al Jazeera Arabic invited me to participate in its hour-long program, In Depth (19 April 2010; 3:00-4:00pm EST), and I was happy to do so via satellite earlier this evening, hosted by Ali Al-Dafiri, with my fellow guest, Mohamad Takriti. One of the main topics that the host of the program, Ali Al-Dafiri, asked me […]
Read More…Dedicated to my colleague and comrade, John Stanton, and to myself. “Isn’t it rich? Are we a pair?” This comes from David H. Price, “Anthropologists as Spies,” The Nation, November 2, 2000: Archeologist Joe Watkins, chairman of the ethics committee, believes that if an anthropologist were caught spying today, “the AAA would not do anything […]
Read More…I am no pundit, but I think that Michel Ignatieff is in trouble unless he can sing Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” (or more appropriate to his political vision, AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” and do so with the exact same voice of Bon Scott, with an ear-grinding guitar solo to boot). Watch our current Prime […]
Read More…Previously I have stated that plagiarism was not one of the issues that I was raising concerning the so-called “Open Anthropology Cooperative” and its disrespect for boundaries and separate identities and political affiliations, let alone the officially authorized butchering of the concept of “open anthropology” on that network, now evacuated of all meaning. However, I […]
Read More…This Be The Verse — by Philip Larkin They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who […]
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ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY 