Making sense of the emotional field
What do emotions mean for anthropologists? Are they a way of knowing or a sign that an anthropologist has lost his professional distance. A reflexive fieldwork account, dedicated to M.
Category: anthropology
Seminar Dynamiek van islamitische culturen
De afdeling Islam & Arabisch van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen houdt vrijdag 13 mei haar jaarlijkse studiedag. Op deze dag zullen diverse onderzoekers van de afdeling vertellen over hun onderzoek. Aan het einde van de dag zal Dr. Samuli Schielke, Research Fellow Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO)Berlijn, een lezing geven met als titel “Second thoughts about the anthropology of Islam, or how to make sense of grand schemes in everyday life”. In zijn lezing ontvouwt dr. Schielke een antropologische benadering voor het bestuderen van het dagelijks leven moslims op een manier die religie serieus neemt, maar mensen niet reduceert tot hun religiositeit.
Diyanet in Turkey and the Netherlands – Transnational politics and politicization of research
The time that researchers could pretend to work in an academic bubble is definitively over, if it ever existed. Research plays a role in political processes and they are always part of specific power configuration. This is particularly clear in case of the research on Islam and Muslims in Europe. Doing research in the post 9/11 political climate about issues such as the place of Islam in European societies is caught up in a complex political and social web of opposing requirements and assumptions. In this article Thijl Sunier reflects upon his research on the Turkish Diyanet and its relation with the Netherlands understood against the background of fundamental changes in Turkish society.
Doing Anthropology
Anthropologists have to analyze, reveal and understand people’s view of reality and how their practices are related to that. But what does that actually mean? What is it that anthropologists do? What is their research about? In a video, three members of MIT’s Anthropology Department, Stefan Helmreich, Erica James, and Heather Paxson, talk about their current work and the process of doing fieldwork.
"Now, it's gonna be a long one" – some first conclusions from the Egyptian revolution
Anthropologist Samuli Schielke was present at the protest on Tahrir Square and maintained a diary. In this blogpost he offers some pre-liminary conclusions based upon his experiences, observations and talks. Schielke makes clear that the protests have a strikingly festive aspect. It is not just a protest against an oppressive regime and a demand for freedom. In itself, it is freedom. It is a real, actual, lived moment of the freedom and dignity that the pro-democracy movement demand. A revolution however also requires persistence.
Closing the week 5 – Featuring the Tunisia & Egypt Uprising
A weekly round up of writings on the Internet, some relevant for my research, some political, some funny but all of them interesting (Dutch/English). (As usual to a large extent based upon suggestions from Dutch, other European, American and Middle Eastern readers. Thank you all.) This week all about the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
Twitwa 4 – Achterlijke en barbaarse culturen
Twitwa van de week. Met deze week achterlijke en barbaarse culturen.
Closing the years 2009-2010
Because I don’t exactly know anymore when I started my own website, both the years 2009 and 2010 have been labelled as celebrating 10 years of blogging. In the last two years I tried to re-direct this site into more like a public anthropology website. A process that started in 2009 with the post Public Anthropology – 10 years from Researchpages to Closer (1999/2000-2009/2010). In this post I review the last two years and give an update on the recent publications.
Wikileaks: Wikivism, Anarchism and the State
What Wikileaks does is to break the secrets of states so they become open for public deliberation. This action and the counter-reaction of states therefore tell us something about the the limits and extent of state power with regard to Internet activism. Although in general the revolutionairy potential of the Internet appears to be rather limited, in this case the Internet can be a substitute for directed organization certainly in the wake of ‘counter-overreaction’ by the states. In that way the ‘counter-overreaction’ does not only validate the leaks but also directly provokes and feeds the activism against the states’ responses to Wikileaks.
Closing the Week 48 – Featuring Morocco and Western Sahara
A weekly round up of writings on the Internet, some relevant for my research, some political, some funny but all of them interesting (Dutch/English). (As usual to a large extent based upon suggestions from Dutch, other European, American and Middle Eastern readers. Thank you all.) This week featuring the dispute over the Western Sahara.