I spent this week fascinated by the photography of Sarah Chinnery. Her images of PNG, famous anthropologists, flower still lives, street scenes, and friends artists and family are all remarkable. I’ve posted many of them over at Highly Accurate Anthros.
This week saw me return to Gephi on a project related to the biography of Marshall Sahlins I’m working on. More soon on this front!
I am reading and enjoying Runaway: Gregory Bateson, the Double Bind, and the Rise of Ecological Consciousness, a sort of intellectual history of The Late Bateson with attention to the broader cultural context of that time, as well as the deeper intellectual genealogy of Bateson’s thought. It’s an interesting and slightly idiosyncratic angle on Bateson which I look forward to finishing soon.
It was the first week of classes here at Mānoa, where we are returning to Normal Life after two years of the pandemic. As a bald professor returning to a campus full of people after two years, I found the smell of shampoo overwhelming!
This week I was consumed by a desire to filter and sort ebook offerings at University of Chicago Press’s 75% off ebook sale. I love this sale since Chicago has a lot of titles my library doesn’t hold.
History of Anthropology Review points out to a few pieces on the renaming of Kroeber Hall, which will be relevant for the history of anthropology just as soon as that renaming is old enough to become history.
Also at History of Anthropology Review I published a long review of Loyer’s biography of Claude Lévi-Strauss. I’m very happy with this piece because it actually evaluates the book rather than merely summarizing it or avoiding saying anything about it altogether, which is what most book reviews do. I’m also satisfied with the prose, which came out well methinks. It is interesting to compare Lévi-Strauss, Firth, and Boas as academic enterpreneurs. Firth and Lévi-Strauss are contemporaries and long-lived institution builders.
I read The Pearl and the Flame by Natan Margalit, the first Rabbi ever born and raised in Hawai‘i. I liked it — and not just because it mentioned by drashing Edward Sapir. Highly recommended if you are Jewish and really into composting.
That’s it for now — have a good week! It will be the first week of school at UH Mānoa!
Murray Chapman, a geographer of the Pacific, passed away on the Big Island after a long career mentoring students, including many Pacific Islanders. The festschrift Oceanic Sojournsis a wonderful collection of reflective essays in his honor. Check out the picture of Chapman and the fam in the Solomon Islands at the beginning of the book.
Marjorie Crocombe, another great Pacific scholar, passed away. There is an excellent long obit at Cook Islands News which features many great pictures. Even more striking is Nanette Lela‘ulu’s portrait of Crocombe. I don’t know what to say about it except that it reminds me of the Joseph Banks portrait except, somehow, in reverse.
Reviews in Anthropology has useful interviews with Regna Darnell and Ray Fogelson. The Fogelson interview — conducted by Sergei Kan — is especially candid and great reading, especially for those of us who knew and loved Ray.
Karolinum Press (in the Czech Republic) is selling Leopold Pospíšil’s memoir of his fieldwork in New Guinea, Adventures in the Stone Age. Pospíšil is a remarkably long-lived man and although the book is being distributed in the US by Chicago, I recommend the ebook directly from Karolinum. No DRM and a very convenient checkout process with excellent English language options. Also very affordable.
Margaret Mead’s quote about how a small group of citizens can change the world can be found all over the Internet. But did she actually say it? And where? The quote is notoriously hard to track down. I’ve tried googling around through And Keep Your Powder Dry and other likely locations but haven’t had much luck locating the origin of this quote. Then something I read — alas, I forget what — pointed me to a book with the quote in it: Earth At Omega: Passage to Planetization by Donald Keys. The book appeared in 1982, but obviously with a title likethe thought is pre-Reagan.
At any rate the quote appears on page 79, at the opening of chapter six. I wonder whether it was something she said at a conference, or often said in conversation? Here’s a screenshot of the quote. I wonder if we can push it back even later in time and find an earlier occurrence?
Alex Golub 
You must be logged in to post a comment.