An Anthropology Blog
My book review of Keir Martin’s book The Death of the Big Men and the Rise of the Big Shots is now available in the latest number of Anthropological Forum. I liked Keir’s book a lot and highly recommend it. It clearly establishes him as a major scholar in this area. But I was disappointed that he didn’t flesh out what he means by ‘The West’ and its culturally specific form of individualism more.
Go take a look. You’ll learn a lot about New Ireland, and a fair but about Manchester as well.
(I read this at my shul when I gave the drash this week)
Once there was a professor of anthropology at Harvard named Clyde Kluckhohn (not Jewish) who was a specialist on the Indians of the American Southwest. It was the 1950s, when Americans were richer and less cosmopolitan than we are today. Every summer wealthy East Coast professors and captains of industry would fly out to Kluckhohn’s ranch in New Mexico, which seemed incredibly exotic to them. He would throw cocktail parties and his wife Florence would prepare delicious little finger sandwiches full of a meat that was not quite fish and not quite chicken. Every year, a guest would invariably ask what it was, and Kluckhohn would loudly announce “rattlesnake!” At which point, at least one guest would vomit. “And that, my friend,” Kluckhohn would say, “is the power of culture.”
The power of culture: nothing physically had changed about the sandwiches. Only the guests’ interpretation of them had changed. There is nothing naturally disgusting about rattlesnake finger sandwiches — many cultures eat snake. It was only by growing up in their White American culture that his guests were socialized to believe rattlesnake was disgusting.
This shabbat we find ourselves faced with a similar situation: is this parshah chicken, or is it rattlesnake? Continue reading “A drash on Korach”
If you are interested in digital anthropology, you may also be interested in my short book review of Daniel Miller and Heather Horst’s book Digital Anthropology. The review can be found here. I think the book will be useful for students, but I didn’t feel it pushed the field forward at all. Nor do I feel it met its goal of founding an entire new sub discipline of anthropology. But how often do books achieve goals like that? Overall its very useful for people trying to learn more about this area, I think.
My new piece on mana is up at The Appendix:
The History of Mana: How an Austronesian Concept Became a Video Game Mechanic
I’ve also written a piece on Savage Minds explaining how and why the article was written.
I hope you enjoy them. When I get a chance I’ll throw up a PDF of the piece on my ‘publications’ page.
My roundup of books about World of Warcraft has just been published by Reviews in Anthropology. It covers books by Mark Chen, Bonnie Nardi, and William Bainbridge.
Although most people know me as an anthropologist or blogger, I’m also active in the Jewish community here in Honolulu. A while ago I gave a drash in which I drew on the work of Edward Sapir. Natan Margalit recently blogged his thoughts on my drash and some of its implications. So head on over there to read more about it!
Alex Golub 