Study diary

Week 6: 4-10 February 2019

February 10, 2019 by Leave a Comment

I was sick the whole week. Only a cold though, so I’m already fit again.

We had the first class in Theory and History and I was positively surprised. The course was a perfect reason for me to pick up an orange paperback volume from 1984 from my bookshelf: Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, edited by Gilbert H. Herdt. I read chapter 4, which seemed to be the core text, written by Herdt himself. To this I added Deborah A. Elliston’s 1995 critique of Herdt. I’ve emailed the lecturer to ask in which unit these readings could fit, since we’re supposed to choose a unit (a person/theory) to present on. I’m guessing (and hoping) Said. Elliston even uses the concept of “erotic ethnocentrism”.

My project in Digital Anthropology lingers slightly as I try to gather more research participants. We had the second out of three colloquia this week.

Continued watching Mr Robot season 3. Overall the series has turned into a more traditional TV series, but a pretty good one. Rewatching Fight Club I realised what a total ripoff Mr Robot is in certain respects. Like, total. Which also was the reason for the rewatch, I just didn’t realise how close it was. Mr Robot is like a cover or remix of a hit. I usually prefer covers over the originals anyway, so that doesn’t bother me at all. As for Fight Club I think Chuck Palahniuk’s novel from 1996 is brilliant and seminal, in that it captured the zeitgeist of an era that wouldn’t manifest until 20 years later. And the film is of course excellent.

Study

Theory and History of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Unit 1

Unit 1.1: Introduction (Theory/History and Knowledge/Politics)

Singh, Bhrigupati, and Jane I. Guyer (2016): Introduction: A joyful history of anthropology. In HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6, no. 2, pp. 197-211.
Video: Dead Anthropologists Play Golf in Heaven: Anthropological Theory (2013, 15 min)

Unit 1.2: How to Read/Review Etnographic Texts and Other Media

Taylor, Gordon (1989): 3: Interpretation: reading and taking notes. In A Student’s Writing Guide: How to Plan and Write Successful Essays (2009 edition), pp. 53-88.

Extra

Readings related to my research:

Boellstorff, Tom, Bonnie Nardi, Cecilia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor (2012): Ethnography and Virtual Worlds. Handbook of methods:
- 6: Interviews and virtual worlds research (pp. 92-112)

Readings related to Theory and History:

Herdt, Gilbert H. (1984): 4. Semen Transactions in Sambia Culture. In Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, pp. 167-210.
Elliston, Deborah A. (1995): Erotic Anthropology: “Ritualized Homosexuality” in Melanesia and beyond. In American Ethnologist, Vol. 22, No. 4 (November 1995), pp. 848-867.

Other

Articles

The Economist: UNIQLO’s founder plots a way to beat Zara and H&M
The New York Review of Books: America’s Original Identity Politics (skimmed)
AJE Scholar: Making the Choice: Open Access vs. Traditional Journals
Delicious Brains: Is Gutenberg the End or a New Beginning for WordPress?
Quote Investigator: Now We’re Just Haggling Over the Price
Jan Guillou: Influencers tror att de kan avskaffa demokrati – med ett debattinlägg

Film

Dr Jekyll. and Mr. Hyde (1931, 98 min)
Fight Club (1999, 139 min)
Everyone Says I Love You (1996, 101 min) – why?
Jón Bjarki Magnússon: Even Asteroids Are Not Alone (2018, 17 min – machinima!)
Beauty and the Bleach. Skin-whitening trend ravages Senegalese women

Podcast & radio

Techdirt Podcast Episode 198: Life Without The Tech Giants
Sveriges Radio P1/Kropp & Själ: Sex som självskada

Week 5: 28 January – 3 February 2019

February 3, 2019 by Leave a Comment

Not a study-intense week, although I presented my project to the class in Digital Anthropology. I also spent some time creating two “recruitment ads” which I uploaded to the networks I will be researching.

In Ethnographic Film Unit 11 – the last unit – I liked Chantal Akerman’s film News from home very much. I thought that she was only 21 years old when she shot the New York street scenes and that it must have taken a lot of confidence to “waste” so much film for “nothing”. But she was 26. The film was shot in 1976 but in a way that would elicit 1971, the year she arrived to NYC.

Next week a new course will begin about the theory and history of anthropology. That will conclude this semester. I’ve already registered for the next and got my student card validated.

Outside the studies, I finished Alexandre Enkerli’s almost ten years old podcast series Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast. I really enjoyed it. It confirmed what I have been learning over the last semester in a good way. Alexandre obviously knows his stuff and is nice to listen to.

On Friday I hosted another episode of our Swedish podcast on internet privacy:

Saturday was a full day out with friends and a visitor.

Started watching Mr Robot season 3. Not entirely convinced.

Study

Ethnographic Film Unit 11

Autoethnography

Morra, Joanne (2007): Daughter’s Tongue: The Intimate Distance of Translation. In Journal of Visual Culture 6, issue 1 (April 2007), pp. 91-108.

And the film:

Chantal Akerman: News from home (1977, 88 min)

Extra

Readings related to my research.

Boellstorff, Tom, Bonnie Nardi, Cecilia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor (2012): Ethnography and Virtual Worlds. Handbook of methods:
- 5: Participant observation in virtual worlds (pp. 65-91)
Fisch, Michael (2018): An Anthropology of the Machine. Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network:
- 2: Inhabiting the Interval (pp. 48-78)

Other

Articles

The Economist: How Brussels should respond to Britain’s confused demands
The Economist: The danger of tailings dams
Hyperallergic/Jasmine Weber: Discerning Photography’s White Gaze
Die Welt: In Davos stößt das Greta-Prinzip an seine Grenzen

Podcast

Alexandre Enkerli: Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast (2009)
- 9: Establishing Rapport
- 10: Social Butterfly Effect (SBE)
- 11: Podfade and Future Plans

Week 4: 21-27 January 2019

January 27, 2019 by Leave a Comment

It was a wonderful, intense week full of readings and some ethnographic films. I’m in the process of setting up my research project in Digital Anthropology, since I will be presenting about that on Thursday next week. More on that later.

The readings, presentations and discussion in Digital Anthropology Unit 10 landed in the conviction (for me at least) that the “true or false” is the least important aspect of fake news. Instead, they and their adherents should be seen as a belief system or cult, as worthy of study (and respect) as any esoteric group. Focusing on “true or false” thereby becomes as uninteresting as discussing whether God exists.

I think the framework of virtual world research would be applicable for the study of “fake news fans”. Pizzagate is an example of how things go completely wrong when someone takes the virtual concept of fake news into the actual world. Like an exception that proves the rule, that incident confirms how the virtuality of fake news is taken for granted.

In Ethnographic Film Unit 9 Lydall’s text Beating around the Bush was really interesting in describing and analysing the “wife beating” of the Hamar.

Reading I started reading Michael Fisch’s ethnography on the Tokyo commuter train network An Anthropology of the Machine. I heard an interview with him in the Anthropod podcast in September 2018 (week 38, 2018), and when he surfaced again in a seminal reading by Brian Larkin for Digital Anthropology Unit 9, on infrastructures (week 2, 2019), I checked him up again and realised that this book had just been released. So far he’s laying out the theory. Although I primarily bought this book “for fun”, I think it fits very well into my studies and projects.

Just like Tom Boellstorff in his Second Life research, Fisch focuses on “the gap”. Whereas Boellstorff’s gap is between the virtual and the actual world, Fisch’s gap is between the time table of the trains (the ideal world) and the actual outcome. It’s not unrelated at all and definitely relevant for the things I want to study.

Since the chapter 8 in the handbook by Boellstorff et al was the reading for the Digital Anthropology Colloquium 1 next week, I started reading the book from the start. It’s such an easy an inspiring read, and so well written, that I think the book in full should be mandatory for the very first unit of this course. (We read chapters 2 and 4 for Unit 4 – week 48, 2018.)

Finished Mr Robot season 2 but was not impressed by the resolution.

The week ended with Chris Marker’s film Sans Soleil. I did not like it. At all.

As every week I checked the latest Gutenberg reviews. It’s so sad to see people work a lot on something and then get it completely wrong.

Study

Digital Anthropology Unit 10

Studying online phenomena: Fake News, Virality and manipulative data practices

The Conversation/Yuwei Lin: #DeleteFacebook is still feeding the beast – but there are ways to overcome surveillance capitalism
Michael Zimmer: How Contextual Integrity can help us with Research Ethics in Pervasive Data

Digital Anthropology Colloquium 1

Students’ Planned Research & the Ethical Considerations.

Boellstorff, Tom, Bonnie Nardi, Cecilia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor (2012): Chapter 8: Ethics. In Ethnography and Virtual Worlds. Handbook of methods., pp. 129-150.

Extra

Readings related to my research.

Boellstorff, Tom, Bonnie Nardi, Cecilia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor (2012): Ethnography and Virtual Worlds. Handbook of methods:
- Foreword by George Marcus (pp. xiii-xvii)
- 1: Why this handbook? (pp. 1-12)
- 3: Ten myths about ethnography (pp. 29-51)
Fisch, Michael (2018): An Anthropology of the Machine. Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network:
- Preface (pp. ix-xi)
- Introduction: Toward a Theory of the Machine (pp. 1-28)
- 1: Finessing the Interval (pp. 29-47)
Frennea, Melissa (2012): The Prevalence of Rape and Child Pornography in Yaoi, 34 p.

Ethnographic Film Unit 10

Issues of Representation: A Case Study of the Hamar

Lydall, Jean (2006): Imperilled name and pained heart. More about Duka’s Dilemma’. In Jean Lydall and Ivo Strecker (eds.): The Perils of Face, Essays on cultural contact, respect and self-esteem in southern Ethiopia, pp. 311-337.
Lydall, Jean (1994): Beating around the Bush. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, volume II, 26 p.

And these films:

Robert Gardner: Rivers of Sand (1974, 84 min)
Kaira Strecker and Jean Lydall: Duka’s Dilemma (2001, 88 min)

Ethnographic Film Unit 11

Autoethnography

Russell, Catherine (1999): Autoethnography: Journeys of the Self. In Experimental Ethnography, pp. 275-315.

And the film:

Chris Marker: Sans Soleil (1982, 100 min)

Other

Articles

The Economist: The steam has gone out of globalisation
The Economist: Donald Trump made a dreadful miscalculation over the shutdown
The Economist: Companies can appeal to workers and consumers with liberal messages
The Economist: The arrival of Foxconn in Wisconsin divides Democrats
The Guardian/Elfriede Jelinek, Milan Kundera, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, and 26 others: Fight for Europe – or the wreckers will destroy it
The Independent/Lucy Jones: Why the Fyre Festival documentaries were so terrifying
Insider: The world’s biggest YouTube stars told us they’re burning out because of the unrelenting pressure to post new videos
Post Status/Brian Krogsgard: Post formats are slowly dying, and that’s okay (great piece from 2014 that made me understand the trajectory of post formats and why I don’t need them)

Podcast

Alexandre Enkerli: Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast (2009)
- 6: Draft Aesthetics
- 7: Teaching Ethnography
- 8: Failures of Anthropology

Film & video

Hubert Sauper: Darwin’s Nightmare (2004, 107 min)
Gurminder K Bhambra: Colonial Histories/Postcolonial Societies: On the Politics of Selective Memory in Europe (2018, 95 min)
Casey Neistat: Burnt OUT YouTubers
Simone Giertz: My brain tumor is back

Week 3: 14-20 January 2019

January 20, 2019 by Leave a Comment

The week’s highlight was unit 9 of Digital Anthropology and the one-minute video assignment for that workshop.

Unit 9 of Ethnographic Film covered ethics and spurred me to write on the different ethics of journalism and anthropology.

I’ve already read all mandatory readings for next week’s Digital Anthropology Unit 10, which seems to be very interesting, judging from the readings. I was especially intrigued by Stark’s text, which put the data usage of social media in perspective by combining technology and psychology. His conclusions are similar to my own thinking over the last couple of years. It’s a compliment to the lecturers that all readings are from 2018 for this highly current class.

I’ve had it with Gutenberg and went back to WordPress’ Classic Editor, which as of now has over 2 million active installs. I really think I gave Gutenberg a try, but in the end the endless hassles cramped my creativity too much. Finally peace of mind!

Study

Digital Anthropology Unit 9

Artistic Practice in the Virtual Age // Post-internet Art

Aporta, Claudio, and Eric Higgs (2005): Satellite culture: global positioning systems, Inuit wayfinding, and the need for a new account of technology. In Current Anthropology 46 no. 5, pp. 729-753.
Kaplan, Louis & Melissa Shiff (2016): Mapping Ararat: An Augmented Reality Walking Tour for an Imaginary Jewish Homeland. In Anthrovision 4, no. 2, pp. 1-23.
Kendall, Blake (2018): Life in Motion Blur: Visualising the Virtual & Material Paths of Progress. Visual essay, 15 min.

Digital Anthropology Unit 10

Studying online phenomena: Fake News, Virality and manipulative data practices

Bounegru, Liliana, Jonathan Gray, Tommaso Venturini, and Michele Mauri (2018): A Field Guide to Fake News and other information disorders, 216 p.
Coates, Jamie (2018): So ‘Hot’ Right Now. Reflections on Virality and Sociality from Transnational Digital China. In Digital Culture & Society 3, no. 2, pp. 77-98.
Stark, Luke (2018): Algorithmic psychometrics and the scalable subject. In Social Studies of Science 48, no. 2, pp. 204-231.

In addition, I found a film made by one of the authors:

Coates, Jamie: Tokyo Pengyou (2018, 48 min)

Ethnographic Film Unit 9

Ethics and Ethnographic Filmmaking

Barbash, Ilisa & Lucien Taylor, eds. (1997): Sections Ethics and Reciprocity in chapter Getting going: from Fieldwork to filming (part 1). In Cross-Cultural Filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary and Ethnographic Films and Videos, pp. 48-69.
Pink, Sarah (2006): Ethics and Ethnographic Research. In Doing Visual Ethnography, pp. 36-46.

And these films:

Gary Kildea and Andrea Simon: Koriam’s Law – and the dead who govern (2005, 113 min)
Les Mclaren and Annie Stiven: Taking Pictures (1996, 57 min)

Project

Related to my interactions with Japanese men on Twitter:

Gayjin Japan: 9monsters

Other

Week 49: 3-9 December 2018

December 9, 2018 by Karl Leave a Comment

The week’s highlight was my presentation on Robert Gardner in Unit 5 of Ethnographic Film. I was a bit nervous but I was well prepared and it went pretty smoothly – both the class and the teacher seemed to like it. It’s a challenge to present in front of the screen, while the whole class is watching in front of their screens.

Presentation on Gardner.

Miles car rental — Cheap rental from Miles.

With so much film viewing on laptops, I decided to finally buy a projector. Then I changed my mind. You have to pay so much to get decent quality, and I know I would get annoyed by the fan. And I had almost forgotten that I have an unused 60-inch plasma in the office. The hardest thing is to transport it, but on Friday we rented a Miles transporter and made the move. The result is fantastic and the rental only cost 11 euro for 8 km, despite we had the car for over an hour due to traffic and carrying.

And then it finally happened: I did not read everything for this week’s Digital Anthropology class. That is of course natural and to be expected – it’s up to us students to choose how thoroughly we participate in this programme. That said, until now I’ve read all mandatory readings and most of the recommended ones too – for every course. But I’ve reached a point where I must be more selective in my readings as my research interests become clearer. That’s a good thing.

Study

Ethnographic Film, Unit 6

Module introduction: Ciné-trance.
Stoller, Paul (1992): Les Maîtres Fous. In The Cinematic Griot: The Ethnography of Jean Rouch, pp. 145-160.
Russell, Catherine (1999): Ecstatic Ethnography: Filming Possession Rituals. In Experimental Ethnography, pp.193-237. (Read selectively the chapter introduction and Jean Rouch: Ciné-transe = pp. 193-199 and 218-229.)

And the films:

Jean Rouch: Les Maîtres Fous (1955, 29 min)
Bill Viola: I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like (1986, 89 min)

Digital Anthropology, Unit 5

Gillespie, Marie; Osseiran, Souad; Cheesman, Marie (2018): Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone Infrastructures and Affordances. In: Social Media + Society 4, no. 1, pp. 1-12.
Video: Exodus Our Journey To Europe Ep. 01 (2016, 59 min)
Video: Your phone is now a refugee’s phone

Digital Anthropology, Unit 7

Jurgenson, Nathan & Rey, PJ (2013): The Fan Dance: How Privacy Thrives in an Age of Hyper-Publicity. In Lovink, Geert & Rasch, Miriam, eds: Unlike Us Reader. Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives, pp. 61-75.
Abidin, Crystal (2018): Chapter 2: Qualities of Internet Celebrity. In Internet Celebrity. Understanding Fame Online, pp. 19-36.

Other

Articles

The Economist: Indigenous peoples across the world no longer seem doomed to extinction
The Economist: How to save Ethiopia’s democratic revolution
The Economist: The promise and peril of Ethiopia’s democratic revolution
The Economist: Brazil’s classrooms become a battleground in a culture war
The Economist: The Central European University is moving to Vienna
The Economist: Satellites may connect the entire world to the internet
Explain that stuff: Satellites
Sankaku Complex: Saint Seiya Goes Forward With Female Saints In “Saintia Shou”

Film, video & games

Draxtor Despres: Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me (2018, 75 min)
The Nerdwriter: Why Are There So Few Smartphones In Popular Movies?
Mr Robot S1E4-5 (2015, 98 min, rewatched)
PS3: 街スベリ (2010)
Wii U: 太鼓の達人 Wii Uば～じょん! (2013)

Week 40: 1-7 October 2018

October 7, 2018 by Karl Leave a Comment

The first week of the program was extremely intense despite Wednesday was a holiday. Modes of representation on Monday and Tuesday; Qualitative methods on Thursday and Friday. An assignment on Monday night, and the graduation exhibition of Generation 9 on Friday, followed by drinks at Krass Böser Wolf.

It feels like being at a very concentrated conference. And that feels great – I devour every minute of the program. One more week of intense, mandatory inhouse classes coming up.

Study

Modes of representation

Videos we watched in class:

Jorge Furtado: Ilha Das Flores, 1989
Frederick Wiseman: Titicut Follies, 1967
Johan van der Keuken: Herman Slobbe / Blind Kind II, 1966
Renzo Martens: Episode I, 2002
John Smith: Hotel Diaries: Museum Piece, 2004

Not to mention our assignments, here are my three minutes:

Anthropology and Photography

Lucie Ryzova, 2014: Nostalgia for the Modern: Archive Fever in Egypt in the Age of Post-Photography, in Costanza Caraffa and Tiziana Serena (eds.): Photographic Archives and the Idea of Nation, pp. 301-318.

Japanese

Intermediate Japanese. Review of Chapter 5.
Memrise: 47,500
- 2136 Jōyō Kanji by Grade, level 13 (half) → 500 of 2136 kanji learned

Other

Otaku papers

Patrick W. Galbraith, 2011: Lolicon: The Reality of ‘Virtual Child Pornography’ in Japan. In Image & Narrative, Vol 12, No 1, pp. 83-114.

Articles

The Economist: The real victims of campus activism are the students (book review of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.)
The Economist: Justice Brett Kavanaugh
The Economist: High hopes for Hakeem Jeffries
The Economist: Flu’s success owes much to its genetic mutability

Video

John Smith – The Girl Chewing Gum 1976

Exhibition

Malleable Borders, Shifting Identities: 2018 Graduation Exhibition of the Freie Universität MA Visual and Media Anthropology program.

Work

I managed to cram in a podcast episode on Saturday: