Anthropology

It's been a year since the pandemic hit. In US alone we can already see how corona is tied deeply with domestic politics, it's the same in other countries too.

There are already much written about this in IR and public health studies, but how does anthropology discuss this covid-19 pandemic? How did anthropology discuss past pandemics or epidemics, like Ebola, Hong Kong flu, Spanish flu?

Would love to get some direction here. Thanks in advance!

Hello I’m an anthropology grad student who at 23 has been told I should be evaluated for autism. It’s rather jarring at this age but also as relieving as you might imagine. I’m working in education issues too so this is very complicated to think about, but it makes too much sense. I’ve poked around and haven’t been able to find much good research, but I was hoping with at least the strides in awareness and discourse about neurodivergence in recent years, anthropology may have found ways to discuss autism in adults well and in a representative, relativistic way. I was also wondering if anyone on here is autistic or knows of autistic anthropologists? I just cant help but shake the feeling that in many ways neurodivergence and anthropology can work so beautifully together and I was hoping someone could give some insight? Thank you to anyone in these complicated times.

There was a talking head interview where she was essentially expressing disdain that Richard and Antoinette (the grad students) choose to live with a committed partner without being legally married. She also said she felt like they were saying that it was the "better way."

All I could think was um...firstly, she's not legally married to Kody as of season 8. I know that spiritual marriages are of the most importance in their sect, but the fact that she specifically highlighted the importance of legal marriage while not being legally married herself was just very odd to me. Secondly, how many times have we heard from each of the Browns that monogamy isn't fun or rewarding as they insinuate that polygamy is the "better way?" I could be biased because I am a non-religious person and Robyn irks me the most on this show, but still. The hypocrisy is blatant.

I'm doing an area studies graduate degree at the moment and have had no formal training in anthropology up until this point, though I have some knowledge of the discipline from working in adjacent fields and doing some independent research into it for my own curiosity.

This semester I've taken an anthropology class, but I found the professor's view of social science and anthropology more specifically very interesting. According to him, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber are the founders of modern anthropology. From what I understand this isn't a particularly controversial position to take. What I find quite interesting is that he goes further and claims that those three figures continue to have paramount importance for all anthropological work done today - to the extent that all contemporary anthropological work can and should be understood as working within either a Marxist, Durkheimian (or functionalist), or Weberian paradigm. This seems to me to be a tad surprising, and jars somewhat with my training in other fields. Across all other social science fields I've formally studied, figures like Foucault, Deleuze, Said, Judith Butler, Badiou, Kristeva, and Agamben - who have quite tight associations with so-called "continental" philosophy - play the largest roles (though I understand Marx has quite large importance for some of them). He briefly mentioned that there are people who dismiss those three figures on the basis that they're white men, but didn't really address it in any great detail, just briefly shut down the idea and moved on.

I did very much get the sense that perhaps what I'm seeing here is a disciplinary debate here between orthodoxy and revisionism, with my professor taking a very strong orthodox position on the role of Marx, Durheim, and Weber in anthropology. It does make me curious how common that position is, and specifically what the revisionist position is (something tells me there's likely more to it than simply dismissing those three as white men) and what figures "revisionists" would argue as having greater importance for contemporary anthropology.

Of course, my assessment of the situation might just be totally wrong as well, I'm mostly an outsider to anthropology after all. I'd be very interested to hear what experience anthropologists who have been doing this for a while have with this.

For those who have degrees in anthropology, what are you doing or what have you done for work? Is your job related to your degree? Did you find the degree useful? Did you get a masters or only undergraduate degree?

hi friends!! i myself am not a practicing wiccan (yet...?) but i find it to be really beautiful and intriguing, so it’s the group of people i chose to study for my anthropology course. i need to “interview” 3+ people, so i would love to get in contact with a couple of you who are interested in sharing your story :) please comment or message me if you’d like to help! i appreciate you all so much!!

I'm a data journalist working on a story about hair; namely, that by many measures we all became very preoccupied with our hair in the months after March 2020. I have found that Google searches for 'hair' and related keywords exploded in March and April, roughly matching the rise in the global death rate from the virus. Hair care companies have reported record sales of hair clippers, dyes, and other accessories. Anecdotally, and subjectively, many people around me was shaving off their hair, dyeing it, or changing it in some way.

After some initial searching, it seems that hair is quite present in ritual across different societies. But I was wondering what anthropologists would make of this data - and whether you feel it matches exisitng theories about the significance of hair in our psychosocial lives.

Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology

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During the month of January 2021, 2 peers and I have to conduct a fieldwork exercise. We are researching ‘non-western’ art and artists at western museums (more specifically Dutch ones) and the curation of said art, collaboration between museum and artists, presentation, politics of representation, etc. I will gladly give more info if needed. I am quite lost, since our mentors have told us to do our research mostly online, since there is a hard lockdown right now. It is hard for our group to exactly proceed since we can’t do participant observation, exercises like photo elicitation or videoing as easily when doing research online. Do any of you have any input as to how we can do research online? Any digital fieldwork experiences you could share? Or sites we could use? Or how to access a research population? I would really appreciate any feedback!

To give you context, we were discussing marriage, more specifically, each different reason that can be behind it: economical, political... and, of course, for love.

While approaching the subject of "marriage for love", my teacher got us a psychological theory of what love is as a whole and, according to that, love is a combination of three things: commitment, passion and intimacy. When these three are perfectly balance with each other you have "consummate love" and it correspond with the perfect and "ideal" relationship. Every other forms of love lacks or excess in one ,or two, of the requirements love.

Although even "romantic love" in this distinction is classified as a minor form of love(because, according to this theory, it has intimacy and passion but not commitment) it was kinda obvious that the "consummate love" it's meant to be applied only to romantic partner. And this obviously pissed me off and also, the fact that any other form of love is considered, according to this, less important (like friendship) or isn't even acknowledged (like love between a father and his daughter, for example) doesn't make sense to me.

But above all, I think this definition is absolutely arbitrary and it's simply the opinion of one person and I have no intention to take this as a matter of fact or, even less, study it.

And well that's all. Thanks for reading this thing, I appreciate that.

(And also sorry If I made some mistakes but english isn't my first language)

Has anyone heard from UChicago yet?

I often hear this in defence of capitalism that humans are inherently greedy, and any other system would fall due to human nature. As an example of this inherent greediness("normal behaviour"), the normal (e.g. exploitative) way CEOs run their company is used. I don't know how usable the term normal behaviour is, nor how normal that way is.

This week I got 2 updates out of the 4 applications I applied to.

I got rejected from UCSD anthropology PhD via an email telling me to check my portal at midnight last night lol.

I've been in contact with my POI from Uni of Montana all week and am expecting an official acceptance within the next few weeks. (Haven't heard anything about funding yet)

No updates for Uni of Washington or Washington State Uni. (All PhD anthropology)

Edited: UCSD - Medical UM - Biological WSU - Evolutionary UW - Biological

Hi all! I'm applying to Carleton for this fall 2021, and was super curious about their anthropology graduate program. There isn't much discussion on it out there, so just wanted to know: is it a good program (beyond just rankings)? What are the professors like? What's the city's vibe like, and its overall job opportunities for immigrants? Would you personally recommend it?

Thank you!

Edit: Gosh, thank you for all your comments! They've been impossibly helpful.

Sorry if this doesn’t fit the sub, but I thought I had found a great and interesting channel by the name of Atlantean Gardens, and then he started talking about how the white race is superior and a bunch of other racist drivel.

Hello everyone !

I have a personal goal of studying anthropology, but since I work full time, it would have to be an evening course.

I already have a list of universities that match this criteria but the pandemic tought me that online courses are not that bad, so I thought I would search for online courses and have a list of them as a Plan B.

My reasons for wanting to studying anthropology are mostly: A) because I like it and want to learn more about Human cultures and B) because I have a career in UX and an anthropology degree would give me some interesting tools to add to my répertoire.

Any suggestions ?

I am often surprised with the questions that people ask here because they are really far removed from the issues that I deal with - and I'm an Anthropologist. It took me some time to understand that a lot of questions and answers in this sub come from a US perspective. In Germany, Anthropology mostly means Social- and Cultural Anthropology (also sometimes referred to Volks- or Völkerkunde, empirical Cultural Studies, Ethnology) while I understand that in the US Linguistic Anthropology, Archeology and Biological Anthropology are much more often not or not to the same extent linked to Anthropology institutionally. In your experience, what are some of the most prevalent issues researched and questions asked in your institutions/countries/region?

My Institut has a strong focus on Migration, Europeanization, Science and Technology studies and Museum studies. How about yours?

Was it interesting?

Thanks!!:)

as in how do different culture view and react to traumatic events, what do they deem traumatic.

for example:

why did the western world suddenly realized that hitting children for example is traumatic and can cause ptsd and cptsd when humans have been existing for thousands of years.

I'm looking for stuff specific but not necessarily only about childhood abuse in the family system, and developmental trauma, child parent relations etc'.

is that even a thing in anthropology?

thnx for any help :)

Edit: thank you so so much guys! I'm very passionate about the topics of developmental traumas and childhood abuse, and you gave me allot to work through as I'm in my first year of bachelor degree and thinking about my future in academics thnx I so excited to dive in and read through yeyyy :-)

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90% of the posts here are people asking if other people are familiar with some kind of experience that the person posting doesn't see in NT people

I think it would be interesting to do some kind of poll in order to identify those experiences or behaviors and catalog them

I tried doing this, but quickly I realized that I don't know how to do research of this kind, my background is all in physics, and this would be anthropology, or maybe psychology, I don't know

So if you are reading this, and you have some experience doing research on people, it would be great to have data on this matter, so that instead of asking the same questions all the time we could read that data and know if something we feel is common with other people with asperger

Hi, I am going to be attending SUNY Geneseo as a transfer student, and I know I'm going to major in history, and have been debating what to double major or minor in. Originally I was thinking about art history, as I am interested in that but the program here is not super great from the looks of it. I am now considering:

Anthropology: have an interest in archeology, biological and linguistic, not so much in cultural. Had a really bad intro to cultural anthropology prof at my current college, who kind of made me dislike cultural anthropology mostly just because he was stupid and painful at lecturing.

Or

Geography I wasn't ever considering this until I was looking thru the college's catalog, I do enjoy geography although never been full on geography nerd, thought it might be a nice fit with history. Apparently the program at Geneseo is really good.

So for clarity, I am planning on going on to grad leval for history want to become a history instructor at the college leval, it's definitely my passion, so I'm wondering which out of these options might be most beneficial and/or complementary with history.

Thanks,

Maybe I would post this in other subreddit but I'm curious, imagine if that we discover (or we are discovered) another species civilized for another planet, and they have culture. Would the study of culture in general (human and alien) have a different name? Or would that enter within Anthropology? Idk, maybe I just say nonsense things.

I got my bachelors degree in both earth science and anthropology in the spring of 2020. I immediately went on to grad school for archaeology, but things got messed up because of COVID. I have never been on a dig before and most of my undergrad focus was in earth and climate science. The summer of 2020 I was supposed to go on a dig with my grad advisor but it was canceled due to the virus. I completed my first semester and I still don’t know if it’s right for me. I keep telling myself it’ll be worth it and the jobs I want will require it so it’ll be easier to go right from school to more school instead of getting in a slump about it. But I’m also feeling like how am I supposed to know if it will be worth it if I have never been on a dig before. I also keep telling myself I can always work at a museum or be a teacher after too, but I just don’t know. Maybe I should have gone to grad school for earth science and not archaeology. I moved across the country in a pandemic for this and I just don’t know what to do. Should I stick it out or drop while I can still save money on the spring semester?