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Can Graffiti Ever Be Considered Art? - 0 views

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  • cverrochi on 22 Apr 13
     
    Jim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older. "I don't know what art is, but...." People have been finishing this sentence with "I know what I like" or "I know it when I see it" for a long, long time. How do you define "art"? In chapter 13, Kottak discusses what is considered art, and how we locate it. In this chapter Kottak brings up the point that "the boundary between what's art and what's not is blurred".

What constitutes art? - 3 views

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eHRAF World Cultures - 0 views

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  • The Yoruba are known for their contributions to the arts. Life-size bronze heads and terracottas, sculpted in a classical style between A.D. 1000 and 1400 and found at the ancient city of Ife, have been widely exhibited. Other art forms are poetry, myth, dance, music, body decoration, weaving, dyeing, embroidery, pottery, calabash carving, leather- and beadworking, jewelry making, and metalworking.
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http://anthro.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085120 - 0 views

anthro.annualreviews.org/...nnurev.anthro.37.081407.085120 family households analysis groups
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    • Erin Brennan
      Erin Brennan on 03 Apr 13
       
      possible use for literature review
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The New DADT: The Military's Ban on Transgender Service - OutServe Magazine - 1 views

outservemag.com/...rys-ban-on-transgender-service transgender military LGBT news
shared by J Scott Hill on 20 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • J Scott Hill on 20 Mar 13
     
    Some background information on issues related to transgender individuals in the military
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Gettysburg College - EI's March 20 transgender inclusion in the military panel to be li... - 2 views

www.gettysburg.edu/...press_release_detail.dot college extracredit
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  • J Scott Hill on 20 Mar 13
     
    "EI's March 20 transgender inclusion in the military panel to be livestreamed" This is an extra credit assignment.  Attend in person or stream the event.  Write up a brief 1-2 page reflection based on your notes of the event for up to 4 points on your midterm exam.
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Perspectives on Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado - 0 views

www.jstor.org/...320007 perspectives darkness anthropology Yanomami
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  • markyearick on 06 Feb 13
     
    "Even before its publication, Darkness in El Dorado became a Janusfaced text that in calling attention to methodological and ethical shortcomings of scientific research in the Amazon also brought attention to faults in its own production." "Tierneys harrowing account forces us to ask how personal and professional ethical questions are defined and connected. His merit is to have brought together a vast amount of information about Western anthropological and medical practices carried out among the Yanomami and to have situated these practices within the network of institutional connections that made them possible and the ideologies of science and history that have rendered them so popular." "While Tierneys focus is on individuals, his book locates them in two relevant contexts: the cold war and the Vietnam War, during which currents of evolutionary genetics, sociobiology, and cultural anthropology claiming that aggression plays a positive role in human evolution found broad support, and the Venezuelan petrostate culture of clientelism, which fostered a network of corrupt politicians and businessmen with interests in the Yanomami and their territory for reasons of profit and power."
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Coronil et al., Perspectives on Darkness in El Dorado - 1 views

anthroniche.com/...0457.htm darkness el dorado tierney neel chagnon measles Yanomami
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  • The first strand of the book, which occupies less than one-tenth of Tierney's text but has received the most public attention, argues that Neel and Chagnon collected blood samples for the Atomic Energy Commission to compare mutation rates in populations contaminated by radiation with those in one uncontaminated by it and at the same time carried out an experiment on immunity formation among an isolated population involving a measles vaccination program. According to Tierney, although a safer and cheaper vaccine was already available, Neel chose the Edmonston B vaccine because it produced antibodies that would allow for comparison of European and Yanomami immune systems and prove the latter's ability to generate levels of antibiodies similar to those of populations previously exposed to the disease. Tierney's most controversial and damaging charge is that these activities may have led to a deadly outbreak of measles. While medical experts agree that no vaccine could have caused an epidemic, it is still not clear why this outdated vaccine was chosen or what measures were taken to care for those affected by its known reaction.
  • For Tierney, however, seemingly any biomedical research is unethical; all studies for Tierney are "experiments" (however observational their methods), and all "experiments" that do not directly benefit the community involved in the study are "criminal" (p. 43). Thus James Neel, a recently deceased distinguished human geneticist as well as physician, who carried out an extensive series of biomedical studies of the Yanomami, is criminalized.
  • ere is where Neel parted company with classical eugenics. He never advocated selective breeding practices. He merely pointed out the selective consequences of Yanomami polygyny (Neel 1980 ) and noted with irony the extreme unlikelihood that populations in the industrialized world would adopt Yanomami marriage practices. His prescriptions for the gene pool (Neel 1994 ) all involved manipulating the environment rather than genetics. These included efforts to control population growth, "euphenics" or the reshaping of environments to "ameliorate the expression of our varied genotypes" (Neel 1994 :353), keeping mutation rates as low as possible through control of exposure to environmental mutagens, and providing counseling to prospective parents to decrease the transmission of genetic diseases. None of these ideas bear any resemblance to classic eugenic schemes.
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  • Elsewhere Tierney's misrepresentations cannot be dismissed as this kind of error. For instance, he associates unethical experiments in the University of Rochester Medical School with Neel, who was "company commander" and "ran much of the hospital" (p. 301). But rather than running the hospital, the page cited by Tierney from Neel's autobiography ( 1994 :22) says that he drilled the students in military exercises required by their army service. This is a particularly useful example of Tierney's misuse of citations, since it is so easily checked.
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Michael Shermer: What Is Skepticism, Anyway? - 2 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...epticism-anyway_b_2581917.html science skepticism ted
shared by J Scott Hill on 02 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Consider global warming: Are you a global warming skeptic? Or are you skeptical of the global warming skeptics? In this case, I used to be a global warming skeptic, but now I'm skeptical of the global warming skeptics, which makes me a global warming believer based on the facts as I understand them at the moment. The "at the moment" part is what makes conclusions in science and skepticism provisional.
  • Thus, science and skepticism are synonymous, and in both cases it's okay to change your mind if the evidence changes. It all comes down to this question: What are the facts in support or against a particular claim?
  • Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.
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  • Skepticism is not "seek and ye shall find," but "seek and keep an open mind."
  • Skepticism is the rigorous application of science and reason to test the validity of any and all claims.
  • Typically pseudoscientists will make statements that are unverified, or verified by a source within their own belief circle.
  • J Scott Hill on 02 Feb 13
     
    This Article highlights the connection between skepticism, science, and belief.  This dovetails with our discussion of paradigm shifts and how scientific results gain credibility through the peer review process where the data and methods are scrutinized along with the truth claims by qualified peers.
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Anthropological Niche of Douglas W. Hume - Darkness in El Dorado - 3 views

anthroniche.com/...index.html darkness
shared by J Scott Hill on 31 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • We write to inform you of an impending scandal that will affect the American Anthropological profession as a whole in the eyes of the public, and arouse intense indignation and calls for action among members of the Association. In its scale, ramifications, and sheer criminality and corruption it is unparalleled in the history of Anthropology... (Turner & Sponsel letter) This website is dedicated to providing a place to find information about Patrick Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon.
  • J Scott Hill on 31 Jan 13
     
    This website by Douglas Hume contains an immense amount of material concerning the controversy resulting from Patrick Tierney's book, darkness in El Dorado.  Please read through this site and use you personal library in Diigo to create a database of sources you will use in our discussion/debate next week.
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ANTHROPOLOGIST BIOGRAPHIES -Ortner - 1 views

www.indiana.edu/...Ortner.htm theory ortner keysymbols
shared by J Scott Hill on 30 Jan 13 - Cached
  • This article is the beginning of Ortner’s latest project: American ethnography and the examination of the relationship between class and capitalism in America. When she began her career anthropology, Ortner notes that research in America was unheard of. Since the advent of postmodernism, reflexivity and the exploration of experience that form an anthropologist's perspective have gained greater validity. Ortner’s current research is thus follows her high school classmates, whose culture helped form her perspective.
  • his was a previously inarticulated method of cultural analysis, but one nonetheless used frequently by anthropologists. Her purpose was to explicate this analysis before applying it to her monograph on the Sherpas on which she was simultaneously working.
  • There are two types of main symbols: summarizing and elaborating. Summarizing symbols, not surprisingly, combine several complete ideas into one symbol or sign that the participant perceives. This single symbol stands for all of these ideas simultaneously. This summarizing occurs often with sacred symbols such as the American flag. Summarizing symbols act as a catalyst in order to make an impact on the respondent.
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Marcel Mauss - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Marcel_Mauss gift mauss gebusi
shared by J Scott Hill on 30 Jan 13 - Cached
  • n his classic work The Gift, Mauss argued that gifts are never "free". Rather, human history is full of examples that gifts give rise to reciprocal exchange. The famous question that drove his inquiry into the anthropology of the gift was: "What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back?" (1990:3). The answer is simple: the gift is a "total prestation", imbued with "spiritual mechanisms", engaging the honour of both giver and receiver (the term "total prestation" or "total social fact" (fait social total) was coined by his student Maurice Leenhardt after Durkheim's social fact).
  • The giver does not merely give an object but also part of himself, for the object is indissolubly tied to the giver: "the objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them" (1990:31). Because of this bond between giver and gift, the act of giving creates a social bond with an obligation to reciprocate on part of the recipient. To not reciprocate means to lose honour and status, but the spiritual implications can be even worse: in Polynesia, failure to reciprocate means to lose mana, one's spiritual source of authority and wealth.
  • In a gift economy, however, the objects that are given are inalienated from the givers; they are "loaned rather than sold and ceded". It is the fact that the identity of the giver is invariably bound up with the object given that causes the gift to have a power which compels the recipient to reciprocate. Because gifts are inalienable they must be returned; the act of giving creates a gift-debt that has to be repaid
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Food For Thought: Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...eat-based-diet-made-us-smarter evolution human thought food diet
shared by J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Our earliest ancestors ate their food raw — fruit, leaves, maybe some nuts. When they ventured down onto land, they added things like underground tubers, roots and berries.
  • "You can't have a large brain and big guts at the same time," explains Leslie Aiello, an anthropologist and director of the Wenner-Gren Foundation in New York City, which funds research on evolution. Digestion, she says, was the energy-hog of our primate ancestor's body. The brain was the poor stepsister who got the leftovers.
  • "What we think is that this dietary change around 2.3 million years ago was one of the major significant factors in the evolution of our own species," Aiello says.
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  • cut marks on animal bones appeared
  • that could have been made only by a sharp tool.
  • But Aiello's favorite clue is somewhat ickier — it's a tapeworm. "The closest relative of human tapeworms are tapeworms that affect African hyenas and wild dogs," she says.
  • Besides better taste, cooked food had other benefits — cooking killed some pathogens on food.
  • It breaks up the long protein chains, and that makes them easier for stomach enzymes to digest. "
  • collagen is very hard to digest. But if you heat it, it turns to jelly."
  • starchy foods like turnips, cooking gelatinizes the tough starch granules and makes them easier to digest too. Even just softening food — which cooking does — makes it more digestible. In the end, you get more energy out of the food.
  • J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13
     
    Interesting audio piece on cooked food, meat, and the evolution of our big brains.
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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...ture_of_Scientific_Revolutions Kuhn science philosophy paradigm revolutions
shared by J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13 - Cached
  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn, is an analysis of the history of science, published in 1962 by the University of Chicago Press. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of scientific knowledge and it triggered an ongoing worldwide assessment and reaction in—and beyond—those scholarly communities. In this work, Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in "normal science". Scientific progress had been seen primarily as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of such conceptual continuity in normal science were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science.
  • What is arguably the most famous example of a revolution in scientific thought is the Copernican Revolution. In Ptolemy's school of thought, cycles and epicycles (with some additional concepts) were used for modeling the movements of the planets in a cosmos that had a stationary Earth at its center. As accuracy of celestial observations increased, complexity of the Ptolemaic cyclical and epicyclical mechanisms had to increase to maintain the calculated planetary positions close to the observed positions. Copernicus proposed a cosmology in which the Sun was at the center and the Earth was one of the planets revolving around it.
  • Copernicus' contemporaries rejected his cosmology, and Kuhn asserts that they were quite right to do so: Copernicus' cosmology lacked credibility.
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  • In any community of scientists, Kuhn states, there are some individuals who are bolder than most. These scientists, judging that a crisis exists, embark on what Thomas Kuhn calls revolutionary science, exploring alternatives to long-held, obvious-seeming assumptions. Occasionally this generates a rival to the established framework of thought. The new candidate paradigm will appear to be accompanied by numerous anomalies, partly because it is still so new and incomplete. The majority of the scientific community will oppose any conceptual change, and, Kuhn emphasizes, so they should. To fulfill its potential, a scientific community needs to contain both individuals who are bold and individuals who are conservative.
  • Those scientists who possess an exceptional ability to recognize a theory's potential will be the first whose preference is likely to shift in favour of the challenging paradigm. There typically follows a period in which there are adherents of both paradigms. In time, if the challenging paradigm is solidified and unified, it will replace the old paradigm, and a paradigm shift will have occurred.
  • SSR is viewed by postmodern and post-structuralist thinkers as having called into question the enterprise of science by demonstrating that scientific knowledge is dependent on the culture and historical circumstances of groups of scientists rather than on their adherence to a specific, definable method.
  • Chronologically, Kuhn distinguishes between three phases. The first phase, which exists only once, is the pre-paradigm phase, in which there is no consensus on any particular theory, though the research being carried out can be considered scientific in nature. This phase is characterized by several incompatible and incomplete theories.
  • If the actors in the pre-paradigm community eventually gravitate to one of these conceptual frameworks and ultimately to a widespread consensus on the appropriate choice of methods, terminology and on the kinds of experiment that are likely to contribute to increased insights, then the second phase, normal science, begins, in which puzzles are solved within the context of the dominant paradigm. As long as there is consensus within the discipline, normal science continues.
  • Over time, progress in normal science may reveal anomalies, facts that are difficult to explain within the context of the existing paradigm. While usually these anomalies are resolved, in some cases they may accumulate to the point where normal science becomes difficult and where weaknesses in the old paradigm are revealed. Kuhn refers to this as a crisis. Crises are often resolved within the context of normal science. However, after significant efforts of normal science within a paradigm fail, science may enter the third phase, that of revolutionary science, in which the underlying assumptions of the field are reexamined and a new paradigm is established. After the new paradigm's dominance is established, scientists return to normal science, solving puzzles within the new paradigm.
  • One of the aims of science is to find models that will account for as many observations as possible within a coherent framework. Together, Galileo's rethinking of the nature of motion and Keplerian cosmology represented a coherent framework that was capable of rivaling the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic framework.
  • SSR has also been embraced by creationists who see creationism as an incommensurate worldview in contrast to naturalism while holding science as a valuable tool.[7]
  • J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13
     
    Good highlights of Kuhn's book and the notion of Paradigm shift in science.
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Cultural universal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Cultural_universal universal cultural
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  • J Scott Hill on 28 Jan 13
     
    Here is a relatively long list of "cultural universals." 
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Anthropology - Anthropology - Research Guides at Musselman Library - 0 views

libguides.gettysburg.edu/anthropology anthropology research guides library
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  • Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) World CulturesA cross-cultural database that contains information on all aspects of cultural and social life. Information is organized into cultures and ethnic groups and the full-text sources are subject-indexed at the paragraph level.
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