April 24, 2012 • 10 notes • anthropologymydearwatson

The Anthropologist in 221B Baker Street: Sherlock Fandom Questionnaire:

grannyadelinemarple:

anthropologymydearwatson:

This is the very brief questionnaire on the Sherlock Fandom (the Moffat-Gatniss Sherlock) that is part of my field research for my final Anthropology class project. I (and my GPA) would really appreciate your response to this. Please answer each question with as much information as you can…

Y’all, this is my blog and my research project! If you see this, are in anyway involved with the Sherlock Fandom on Tumblr and have like ten or fifteen minutes please fill this out and get in touch with me! Thank you!

(via andnotcomeflounderingout)

April 1, 2012 • 1 note

Why People in Cities Walk Fast

March 31, 2012 • 47 notes • futurereflections17
March 31, 2012 • 5 notes • sageoflogic

Cultural Heritage and Poverty Eradication in Uganda

sageoflogic:

Reading this for my Heritage Studies class and thought it was relevant to current events:

by Bernard Lubega Bakaye

Introduction

The economist David Throsby has observed that “in an increasingly globalized world, economic and cultural imperatives can be seen as two of the most powerful forces shaping human behaviour.”(2) Throsby alludes to the increasing recognition of the important role of culture in economic development. This author wishes to add his voice to the ongoing debate that seeks to show how preserving and promoting cultural heritage and cultural products is fundamental to the eradication of extreme poverty in developing countries like Uganda that are economically poor but endowed with a rich and diverse cultural heritage. Local communities in these countries can harness cultural heritage to stimulate sustainable economic growth and, thus, help meet some of their country’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).(3)

Uganda’s current efforts to eradicate extreme poverty are similar to those of other developing countries in Sub–Saharan Africa. This author believes there to be a direct correlation between local participation in preserving and promoting cultural heritage and the success or failure of poverty reduction measures and the long-term sustainability of other poverty eradication interventions. Although Ugandan central government policy documents recognize the importance of community participation in implementing such measures, more must be done to address the practical challenges of empowering people to harness the economic potential of their cultural heritage for their material benefit.

I’d also like to point out that one of the many things that “White Savior” programs fail to do is preserve the heritage of the people they are “helping” and often times they are actually willfully destroying that heritage as is often the case with Christian missionary groups over the centuries. 

March 30, 2012 • 36 notes • sociolab
There are radical variations in the way languages carve up the spectrum of visible light; for example, green and blue are distinct colors in English but are considered shades of the same color in many languages. And it turns out that the colors that our language routinely obliges us to treat as distinct can refine our purely visual sensitivity to certain color differences in reality, so that our brains are trained to exaggerate the distance between shades of color if these have different names in our language. As strange as it may sound, our experience of a Chagall painting actually depends to some extent on whether our language has a word for blue.
Does Your Language Shape How You Think? - NYTimes.com (via sociolab)
March 30, 2012 • 6 notes • jemappellepolene
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead (via jemappellepolenee)
March 29, 2012 • 35 notes • argylefanatic
argylefanatic: “Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”

argylefanatic:

“Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”

March 29, 2012 • 32 notes • ablogabouthistory.com
deconversionmovement: Some Neanderthals had Brown Eyes, Dark Skin A genetic study of two Neanderthal females found in Croatia has revealed that they had brown hair and brown eyes. The study has provoked deep skepticism among several outside researchers, however, who criticize numerous aspects of its methodology. The results also run contrary to other genetic evidence and to a long-held hypothesis that Neandertals, who lived mostly in northern latitudes, must’ve had light skin to get enough vitamin D. But even scientists who have doubts about the new research say it still provides food for thought. Neandertals occupied a wide geographical range, says John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the study and who is also studying the physical traits of ancient humans, so it likely that they were variable in pigmentation. We are really at the first step. [Full story]

deconversionmovement:

Some Neanderthals had Brown Eyes, Dark Skin

A genetic study of two Neanderthal females found in Croatia has revealed that they had brown hair and brown eyes.

The study has provoked deep skepticism among several outside researchers, however, who criticize numerous aspects of its methodology. The results also run contrary to other genetic evidence and to a long-held hypothesis that Neandertals, who lived mostly in northern latitudes, must’ve had light skin to get enough vitamin D.

But even scientists who have doubts about the new research say it still provides food for thought. Neandertals occupied a wide geographical range, says John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the study and who is also studying the physical traits of ancient humans, so it likely that they were variable in pigmentation. We are really at the first step.

[Full story]

March 28, 2012 • 4 notes • beauxland

beauxland: Starting real conversations, saying "I don't know," and being kind.

beauxland:

“People all over the world spend countless hours of their lives every week being fed entertainment in the form of movies, TV shows, newspapers, YouTube videos and the internet. And it’s ludicrous to believe that this stuff doesn’t alter our brains.

It’s also equally ludicrous to believe that - at…

March 28, 2012 • 81 notes • scinerds

scinerds:

Field Notes: A Visit to an Early Human Death Trap [Videos and Slide Show]

Could a recently discovered species from South Africa be the ancestor of us all?

Top photo: Nearly two million-year-old skull of a young male Australopithecus sediba, a fossil human species recently discovered in South Africa.
Bottom Photo: End of hominin shinbone pokes through the sediment at Malapa, waiting to be excavated.

March 27, 2012 • 5 notes • argonautsofanthropology

Anthropologists, abortion and the cultural war in America

March 27, 2012 • 22 notes • nfinitelens
ssalari: Neither the bonds of blood nor those of language alone make a nationality. It is rather the community of emotional life that rises from our everyday habits, from the forms of our thoughts, feelings, and actions, which constitute the medium in which every individual can unfold freely his activities. Franz Boas, 1928

ssalari:

Neither the bonds of blood nor those of language alone make a nationality. It is rather the community of emotional life that rises from our everyday habits, from the forms of our thoughts, feelings, and actions, which constitute the medium in which every individual can unfold freely his activities.

Franz Boas, 1928

March 26, 2012 • 67 notes • saaraeliisavaris
saaraeliisavaris: Jane Goodall

saaraeliisavaris:

Jane Goodall

(via sulitati)

March 26, 2012 • 14 notes
The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.
American Anthropological Association (via akraodow)

(via personality-crisis-deactivated2)

March 25, 2012 • 11 notes • thothofnorth

Thoth of North: Language death

thothofnorth:

What are your views of language death? Should general public, or linguists, care about that? Is it just a normal course of events or are we loosing valuable knowledge and worldviews with the languages and the indigenous cultures and peoples with them?

Few links on the topic:

BBC website article…