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I was away for the first three days of this week, and although I could participate in the Ethnographic Film Unit 3 class on Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein on Tuesday night, I didn’t have any time to read during those days.

I was therefore slightly unprepared for the Digital Anthropology Unit 3 class on Thursday, but it was so interesting that I read all the recommended readings after class. (I was partly late with my readings for Unit 3 because I had started to look into those for Unit 7, since that’s where I’ll be having a presentation.) I really love this course and think the readings are very well chosen, with a few exceptions. I get lots of ideas all the time about things to research, and I write them down.

On Saturday I took a day off to edit my first five minute movie from Ethiopia, where we go to Azwa Mariam Monastery on an island in Lake Tana by Bahir Dar.

Study

Ethnographic Film, Unit 3

• Film: Sergei Eisenstein: Battleship Potemkin (1925, 75 min)

Ethnographic Film, Unit 4

• Unit 4: Early Documentary/Fiction Film: Realism & Neorealism. Module introduction.
• Grimshaw, Anna (2001): The light of reason: John Grierson, Radcliffe-Brown and the enlightenement project. In The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of seeing in Modern Anthropology, pp. 57-68.

Films to this unit:

• Roberto Rossellini: Rome Open City (1945, 102 min)
• Edgar Anstey & Arthur Elton (prod. by John Grierson): Housing Problems (1935, 15 min)
• Harry Watt & Basil Wright (prod. by John Grierson): Night Mail (1936, 22 min)

Digital Anthropology, Unit 3

• Postill, J., and Sarah Pink (2012): Social media ethnography: the digital researcher in a messy web. Media International Australia, 14 p.
• Daniel Miller et al. (2016): Introductory chapters. In How the World Changed Social Media, pp. 1-41.
• Video: Daniel Miller introduces Tales from Facebook
• Frömming et al. (2017): Digital Environments and the Future of Ethnography. An Introduction. In Digital Environments. Ethnographic Perspectives across Global Online and Offline Spaces, pp. 13-21.
• Collins, Samuel et al (2017): Ethnographic Apps/Apps as Ethnography. In Anthropology Now 9, no. 1, pp. 102-118.

Digital Anthropology, Unit 7

• Baym, Nancy (2012): Fans or Friends? Seeing Social Media audiences as musicians do. In Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 9, no. 2, pp. 286-316.
• Baym, Nancy (2015): Connect with your audience! The relational labor of connection. In The Communication Review 18, no. 1, pp. 14-22.
• Abidin, Crystal (2018): Preface. In Internet Celebrity. Understanding Fame Online, p. ixx-xxii.

Other

Articles

• The Economist: The truth about a no-deal Brexit
• The Economist: Why Donald Trump is wrong to ignore the murder of a Saudi journalist

Podcast

• Alexandre Enkerli: Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast 3: What it means to be an ethnographic fieldworker.

The Ethnographic Film series continued with Unit 2 – Margaret Mead and Timothy Asch. Unlike for Unit 1 (Robert Flaherty) I didn’t do all readings, only the two mandatory ones. I watched all videos though. I will be the presenter of Unit 5, about Robert Gardner and Forest of Bliss, and will therefore focus on the readings to that unit, while only reading the mandatory ones for the others.

We had a session on grounded theory in Qualitative Methods, and I must say I really, really like it. The introductory readings were not that easy to get through, but I felt excitement at grasping something that was completely new to me, and which makes such perfect sense. This is exactly what I hoped to be able to learn at this programme. “So this is how they do it”, was the feeling. The social scientists, that is. I’m now thinking about how I will be able to use grounded theory in my future research. Next session, in two weeks, will cover coding.

The second unit of Digital Anthropology had lots of introductory readings to the course as a whole, and many of them were really interesting. I especially liked Boellstorff’s notion of “the gap” between virtual and actual, and how it is the gap that defines the virtual as virtual, and thereby also the actual as actual. Without the gap, there is no virtual, but also no actual. The gap is therefore what defines us as human beings. It is essential.

With so many interesting readings, not much in the “Other” category!

Study

Qualitative Methods, Unit 8: Interviewing

• Video lecture on interviewing.

Qualitative Methods, Unit 9: Grounded Theory

• Module introduction: Grounded Theory (objectivist and constructivist).
• Willig, C. (2013): Grounded Theory Methodology. Chapter 7 in Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3 ed., pp. 69-82.
• Charmaz, K. (2000): Grounded Theory. Objectivist and Constructivist Methods. Chapter 19 in N. K. Denzin, Y.S. Lincoln (Ed.): Handbook of Qualitative Research, pp. 509-535.

Ethnographic Film, Unit 3: Dziga Vertov

• Barnouw, Erik (1974): Reporter. In Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, pp. 51-71.
• Petric, Vlada (1978): Dziga Vertov as Theorist. In Cinema Journal, Vol.18 (1), pp. 29-44.

And the film:

• Dziga Vertov: Man with a Movie Camera (1929, 80 min)

Ethnographic Film, Unit 5: Robert Gardner

• Loizos, Peter (1993): Robert Gardner in Tahiti, or the rejection of realism. In Innovation in Ethnographic Film, pp.139-168.
• Ruby, Jay (2000): Robert Gardner and Anthropological Cinema. in Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology, pp. 95-113.
• Parry, Jonathan P. (1988): Comment on Robert Gardner’s “Forest of Bliss”. In SVA Newsletter.
• Cooper, Thomas W. (1987): Forest of Bliss by Robert Gardner. In Film Quarterly, Vol. 41 (1) (Autumn, 1987), pp. 58-61.
• Mishler, Craig (1985): Narrativity and Metaphor in Ethnographic Film: A Critique of Robert Gardner’s Dead Birds. In American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 87 (3) (September 1985), pp. 668-672.
• Östör, Ákos (1988): Misreading the Metaphor: A Comment on Mishler’s “Narrativity and Metaphor”. In American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 90 (4) (December 1988), pp. 978-980.

And these films by Robert Gardner (I’m starting to realise what an amazing resource Alexander Street is, which we have access to through our university):

• Forest of Bliss (1986, 90 min) (mandatory)
• Dead Birds (1963, 84 min) (recommended)
• The Nuer (1971, 73 min) (recommended) – by Hilary Harris and George Breidenbach, but Gardner was involved
• Deep Hearts (1980, 50 min) (extra)

Digital Anthropology, Unit 2

• Haraway, Donna J. (1985): A Cyborg Manifesto. In Manifestly Haraway (2016), pp. 3-90 (or 5-68 without the fluff). 😑 (I wish I liked this text more!)

Japanese

• Memrise: 24,200
  • 2136 Jōyō Kanji by Grade, still level 16 → 645 of 2136 kanji learned (no progress!)

Other

Articles

• The Economist: Mumbai unions force Uber and Ola into a corner

Podcast

• Alexandre Enkerli: Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast 2: Ethnography as an Approach

So it has begun for real and we’re flooded with readings. Had to take a break from my Japanese studies and other obligations and focus entirely on Digital Anthropology, which seems very promising and excites me a lot!

In addition, this week was a classless reading unit on Interviewing for Qualitative Methods. I had read Bernard’s texts on Unstructured and Semistructured Interviewing as well as Structured Interviewing – both very good and inspiring – in week 43, and now continued with two texts on sensitive questions.

We also had our first session of Ethnographic Film, which was about Robert Flaherty and Nanook of the North. I had read all mandatory and recommended readings for this unit (plus the one we got during class, see below), which I probably won’t manage for all the upcoming units, considering how the classes are aggregating and my focus lingers toward the classes on Digital Anthropology and Qualitative Methods.

Study

Qualitative Methods

• Unit 8: Interviewing. Module introduction.
• Gunaratnam, Y. (2003): Threatening topics and difference: Encounters in psycho-social space. Chapter 7 in Researching race and ethnicity. Methods, knowledge and power, pp. 157-177.
• Lee, Raymond E. (1993): Asking sensitive questions: Interviewing. Chapter 6 in Doing research on sensitive topics, pp. 97-118. (Really good overview of pros and cons of various interview techniques, surveys vs deep interviews, etc.)
• Online QDA: What is Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA)? (extra)

Ethnographic Film, Unit 1

• MacDougall, David (1978): Ethnographic Film: Failure and Promise. P. 405-425 in Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 7 (1978).
• Video: Cronofotografía – Félix Regnault

Digital Anthropology

• Boellstorff, Tom (2008): Chapter 1: The Subject and Scope of this Inquiry and Chapter 2: History. In Coming of Age in Second Life. An Anthropologist explores the Virtually Human, pp. 3-59. (A very geeky approach to background and terminology – I liked it!)
• Hine, Christine (2015). Chapter 1: Introduction and Chapter 2: The E3 Internet: Embedded, Embodied, Everyday Internet. In Ethnography for the Internet: Embodied, Embedded and Everyday, pp. 1-54. (A bit redundant in style, but with important points for the ethnographer.)
• Video: Christine Hine on Online Research Methods (extra)
• Pink, Sarah et al (2016): Chapter 1 (Introduction – What is Digital Ethnography – Digital Ethnography across Disciplines – Principles for a Digital Ethnography). In Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices, pp. 22-53.
• Video: The coming transhuman era: Jason Sosa at TEDxGrandRapids (It’s a Ted talk and I didn’t see how it fit in to the syllabus.)

Japanese

• Memrise: 43,800
  • 2136 Jōyō Kanji by Grade, still level 16 → 645 of 2136 kanji learned.
• Conversation: Two morning sessions with K (Wednesday and Thursday).

Other

Articles

• The Economist: Japan pampers its pets like nowhere else
• The Economist: The collapse of an American retail giant
• The Economist: Angela Merkel will step down as CDU party leader in December
• The Economist: The legalisation of gay marriage meets resistance in Taiwan
• Wired: The Brief History—and Uncertain Future—of Foldable Phones

Film and video

• Langfocus: How I Make a Langfocus Video!
• Quinn Benet: HALLUCINATING in a HOSPITAL: STORYTIME
• Marques Brownlee: Let’s Talk About the Foldable Smartphone!

Podcasts & radio

• Alexandre Enkerli: Rapport: The Informal Ethnographer Podcast 1: Inaugural Episode

Work

It was time for another podcast episode.

Online classes began with a training session on Tuesday, followed by a missed inhouse class on Photography and Anthropology and a seminar on Academic Writing on Friday.

Next week the classes begin for real, with Ethnographic Film and Digital Anthropology. I’ve read up on Robert Flaherty and watched Nanook of the North, which will be discussed in Unit 1 on Tuesday. As for Digital Anthropology, we have just got access to the readings, so I haven’t looked into them yet. And I’m still a bit overwhelmed by the amount of material to read in Qualitative Methods. Even so, I kept to my favourite Spradley.

My Japanese got a boost when K and I took up our tandem trainings. Three mornings this week I came by him on my way to the studio.

In addition, S has begun taking German classes, so I’m helping him every evening, teaching him accusative, dative and genitive the way I was taught it in junior high.

Got a flat on my bike last night, so I took a Berlkönig for the first time.

Study

Qualitative Methods

• Spradley, James P. (1980): Chapter Two: Ethnography for What? P. 13-25 in Participant Observation.
• Unit 8: Interviewing. CMS overview.

Ethnographic Film, Unit 2: The Camera as a Research Tool

• Ruby, Jay (2000): Researching with a Camera: The Anthropologist as Picture Taker. P. 41-66 in Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology.

Japanese

• Intermediate Japanese. Review of Chapter 10.
• Memrise: 71,900
  • 2136 Jōyō Kanji by Grade, level 16 → 640 of 2136 kanji learned
• NEW! Conversation: 3 meetings with K (1h + ca 45 min + 30 min).

Project

Today I met with an informant that I want to interview. Let’s call him ”A”, since he’s my very first informant. He was not prepared to be recorded today, but we might do it next week or sometime soon.

Other

Articles

• The Economist: Arabic, a great language, has a low profile
• The Economist: A visionary abstract artist finally gets her due
• The Economist: Angela Merkel will step down as head of her party
• The Economist: A massacre in Pittsburgh illustrates America’s disunity
• The Economist: Obituary: Pik Botha
• Committee to Protect Journalists: How the Saudis may have spied on Jamal Khashoggi
• The Independent: Jony Ive interview: Apple design guru on how he created the new iPad – and the philosophy behind it
• BBC: What is ‘primitive technology’ and why do we love it?
• Süddeutsche Zeitung: Der Asphalt gehört den Radfahrern
• Tagesspiegel: Die Straße bitte im Sprint überqueren
• Morgenpost: Taxivereinigung und BVG streiten über Berlkönig

Film and video

• Jordan Peterson on Skavlan (39 min)
• The School of Life: The Danger of Being Too Polite in Love (4 min)
• Apple Special Event. October 30, 2018.
• Parker Walbeck: How to Shoot an Interview

Podcasts & radio

• WTF with Marc Maron: Episode 961 – John Cleese
• The Mutant Season: Sean Bonner
• Sveriges Radio: Spanarna

We were free this week – a well needed break after the intensive inhouse classes and before our online classes begin next week.

I took the opportunity to continue watching the ethnographic classics that we will learn about once a week this semester.

I also realised there are lots and lots of texts to read in Qualitative Methods. Most of them are voluntary reads. I really liked the Bernard chapters on interviewing, and I also started reading Spradley’s book from the start, since I liked the chapters we had to read for the inhouse classes.

It was the annual porn film festival in Berlin. I went to three screenings and saw a couple of really good movies, and made some interviews for a future podcast episode.

Study

Qualitative Methods

• Bernard (1995): Unstructured and Semistructured Interviewing. In Research Methods in Anthropology. Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches , p. 208-236.
• Bernard (1995): Structured Interviewing. Ibid, p. 237-255.
• Spradley, J. P. (1980): Preface and Chapter One: Ethnography and Culture. P. v-viii and 3-12 in Participant Observation.
• Screencast: FUVMA Field Work

Ethnographic Film, Unit 2: The Camera as a Research Tool

• Mead, Margaret (1975): Visual anthropology in a discipline of words. P. 3-10 in Principles of Visual Anthropology by Paul Hockings, ed. (1995).
• Video: Margaret Mead & Gregory Bateson: Childhood Rivalry in Bali and New Guinea 1936-1938
• Video: Timothy Asch & Napoleon Chagnon: The Ax Fight (1971)
• Video: Timothy Asch & Napoleon Chagnon: A Father washes his Children (1974)
• Video: John Marshall: The Hunters (1956)

Japanese

• Intermediate Japanese. Review of Chapter 9.
• Memrise: 45,500
  • 2136 Jōyō Kanji by Grade, level 15 → 600 of 2136 kanji learned

Other

Articles

• The Economist: Transgender politics focuses on who determines someone’s gender
• The Economist: Who decides your gender?
• The Economist: When one person’s right is another’s obligation
• The Economist: America’s new attitude towards China is changing the countries’ relationship
• The Economist: The end of engagement
• The Economist: China is broadening its efforts to win over African audiences
• The Economist: A fashionable aesthetic confounds Chinese parents—and officials
• The Economist: A journalist is confirmed dead. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince is defiant
• The Economist: Why people in rich countries are eating more vegan food
• The Economist: Quantum computers will break the encryption that protects the internet
• Expressen/Linda Skugge: Så saboterar ängsliga redaktörer språkglädjen
• SvD/Anders Q Björkman: Är det modernt att vara dålig på högskoleprovet?

Films and video

• Vice: Joshua Oppenheimer on ‘The Look of Silence’ (2015, 25 min).
• Sophie Yetton: Ordinary Streets (2015, 11 min)
• Langfocus: How I study languages

Pornfilmfestival Berlin 2018

• Marianne Chargois: Empower (FR 2018, 23 min)
• Ovidie: Everything’s better than a hooker (FR 2017, 56 min)
• Kristian Petersen: Lizzy and Seyyah (DE 2018, 10 min)
• Nayra Green, Vera Rodriguez, Emy Fem and Catalina Diaz: Behind the window (NL 2017, 5 min)
• Carmina + Fred W. Dewitt: Amateurs professionnels (FR 2017, 35 min)
• Yvette Luhrs + Andre Weststrate: Sex worker at home (NL 2018, 6 min)
• Jan Henrik Stahlberg: Fikkefuchs (DE 2017, 101 min)

Podcasts

• Monocle/The Foreign Desk: Saudi Arabia vs the world
• Sveriges Radio/Europapodden: Avsnitt 82: Kina rekordinvesterar i Europa – ska vi bli rädda?
• Bögministeriet: Det med emigrerande bögar

Work

Report from the pornfilmfestival:

I dropped out of this week’s voluntary documentary camera workshop, since it was not what I had expected and partly collided with the master course in Japanese that I had an idea of taking alongside my anthropology studies over the next two years.

I wrote the placement test on Tuesday, and it turned out to be quite a reality check. I failed miserably and will not be able to study Japanese on this level. How embarrassing, as I had elbowed myself into this course, which is normally only open for students of Japanology.

I remain optimistic though, and will continue my self-studies. After all, I spent the last month preparing for the placement test, thereby reviewing chapter 1-7 in Intermediate Japanese and continuing learning kanji from scratch, the way they learn it in the Japanese school system. I’m currently in fourth grade. I know more advanced kanji than that, but the idea is to get a thorough understanding of them and be able to write them properly – that’s what I’m hoping to achieve by doing this close learning of them. I think Japanese courses and text books in general make the mistake of not taking kanji seriously enough – it’s “too little, too late”. The result is that you learn each word twice: First in kana, then in kanji. Kanji must come first. Thereby it also becomes easier to understand the meaning of the words. So in conclusion: My Japanese has become fit again (if not master course fit) after I practiced it over the last month. That makes it inspiring to continue. I hope to be able to use Japanese in future anthropological field studies, so unlike before, I have a clear goal with my studies now.

Study

Qualitative Methods

• Fieldnotes assignment: Read Kyle’s fieldnotes

Japanese

• Intermediate Japanese. Review of Chapter 8.
• Memrise: 62,700
• • 2136 Jōyō Kanji by Grade, level 14 → 560 of 2136 kanji learned

Other

Otaku papers

• Patrick W. Galbraith: ‘The Lolicon Guy:’ Some Observations on Researching Unpopular Topics in Japan. In Mark McLelland: The End of Cool Japan. Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture, 2016, p. 109-133. 👊
• Patrick W. Galbraith: Fujoshi: Fantasy Play and Transgressive Intimacy among “Rotten Girls” in Contemporary Japan. In Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 37, No. 1 (September 2011), pp. 219-240.
• Midori Suzuki: The possibilities of research on fujoshi in Japan. In Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 12: “Transnational boys’ love fan studies” (March 2013).
• Paul M. Malone: Transplanted boys’ love conventions and anti-shota polemics in a German manga: Fahr Sindram’s Losing Neverland. In Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 12: “Transnational boys’ love fan studies” (March 2013).

Articles

• The Daily Beast/Jake Adelstein: Japan’s Kiddie Porn Empire: Bye-Bye? (2014)
• The Daily Beast/Jake Adelstein: Amazon Japan’s Child Porn Problem? (2015)
• The Economist: Why personalities trump parties in Philippine politics
• The Economist: For the first time in years, Eritreans can leave their country freely
• The Economist: Did Saudi Arabia kill Jamal Khashoggi?
• The Economist: What it means if Saudi Arabia murdered a journalist in Turkey
• The Economist: The Nobel committee shines a spotlight on rape in conflict
• The Economist: Medicare for all is a meaningless slogan
• The Economist: Obituary: Alan Abel died on September 14th
• New Statesman: Francis Fukuyama interview: “Socialism ought to come back”
• Teen Vogue: What “Capitalism” Is and How It Affects People
• Bloomberg: Five Ways to Redesign Cities for the Scooter Era

Films and video

• Joshua Oppenheimer: The Act of Killing, Director’s Cut (2012, 159 min). This film blew my mind. Someone commented that it’s “like the Nazis would have won the war”, and that’s also what Joshua himself says in the interview below, that it was as if he had “wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis still in power”. The worst parts are not those where the perpetrators boast about their killings, but where civil society plays along as in a surreal TV show (1:47) or where a leader urges the masses to “exterminate” the communists in a “humane” way (1:55).
• Vice: Joshua Oppenheimer on “The Act of Killing” (2014, 54 min).
• Joshua Oppenheimer: The Look of Silence (2014, 104 min). Even better than the first one.
• SVT/Tom Alandh: Cornelis – dokumentären (2013, 89 min.)
• SVT/Sverige: Peter Dalle-intervju (16 min.) Genius.
• Andrew Jarecki interview on “Capturing the Friedmans” (2003)
• Hervé Martin-Delpierre: Game Over (2014, 52 min). Via Alexander Street.
• André Hörmann: Calcutta Calling (2006, 16 min). Via Alexander Street.
• Public Lecture Video: Japanese Popular Culture in the News. Exploring Debates about Sexual Norms and Politics. With Patrick W. Galbraith, Renato Rivera Rusca and Takashi Yamaguchi. (2014, 115 min.)
• The Nerdwriter: How Michael Jackson Crafted His First Solo Hit
• Kaiman Wong: Atomos Ninja V – The 4K Mirrorless Must-Have + Lok Eats a Sandwich

Podcasts

• Bubb.la: Japan uppges överväga neka inresevisum till medborgare i länder som vägrat samarbeta vid deportering
• Anthropod: AnthroBites: Queer Anthropology

Work

Filmed and did the audio for HAX’ explainer video: