Words, ideas, videos
Even back before I was trying to be an academic (watch this space) I was reading academic articles for fun. That's not a boast (well, okay, maybe a little bit, but also just a statement of fact). I learned the hard way that much academic output is dross - concept mongering or torturing of so-called... Continue Reading →
I've spent bits of the last two days sat in neo-Gothic wood-panelled halls listening to sages on the stage. Some of the sages have been great. Others, well, that's why I took a book, innit? This is not, after all, my first go at this rodeo. It's the "Adelaide Festival of Ideas" again, that under-funded... Continue Reading →
There’s a story, surely apocryphal, of Shakespeare being locked in attic room and only given food in exchange for pages of an overdue play script. That tactic - “sliding pizza under the door in exchange for good ideas” is something that gets talked about in “strategic niche management.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrEYl9Kl4ZU Its cousin, pump-priming and state-agency-as-facilitator/networker was... Continue Reading →
And we're done. I read, and blogged, a 400 page text book while in quarantine. The plan is to keep that habit (if not tempo) up over the coming 67+ days that I am out in the unReal World that is the world's biggest country town (Adelaide). Section 5 - "Anthropology in the World" was... Continue Reading →
Penultimate chunk of reading the "Introductory Readings in Anthropology" book. It has definitely helped with the quarantine, and if - gaia forbid - I spend another two weeks coupled up somewhen and somewhere, then a big fat textbook about something I want to know about (systems ecology? social movements? critical race theory? surveillance and digital... Continue Reading →
Am seriously loving this book. It makes me wonder about all the gems I have back in Manchester and whether I have time to read them before The Shit Hits The Fan for me too (must never forget it has been and is hitting for many others, who tend not to be human, or white... Continue Reading →
Damn this is the way to satiate my pathological curiosity. Find a recent introductory text book aimed at undergrads and just read from cover to cover over the course of a week or so. Already have my eye on a book on systems ecology... But, getting ahead of myself. So, today the first few articles... Continue Reading →
Am very much enjoying this "Introductory Readings to Anthropology" book, and it makes me think I could read similar on ecology and a bunch of other things. If I write enough each day, that can be my reward!? Today was all identity and rituals (of cleansing, boundary management, liminality - van Gennep etc). As they... Continue Reading →
More fab extracts in the "Introductory Readings in Anthropology" book I bought just before coming to Australia. Within the "Being Human: Unity and Diversity" section today we have "Organising Social Relations: Kinship and Gender, Engaging with Nature and The Humanity of Things. While I liked "The Semantics of Biology" by Kirsten Hastrup, I was thinking... Continue Reading →
So, I'm reading this while in quarantine, 6 to 8 excerpts at a time of this. Today's section was 'Ways of Thinking and Communicating'. Robin Dunbar (him of the Dunbar number) kicks off with some basics, and then a piece by Terence Deacon that had me wanting to re-watch "Arrival." Claude Levi-Strauss calling it like... Continue Reading →
