Life Last Week

Posted on by Rex

When you’re too busy to blog… link!

  • 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.
  • Listening around to Jazz and Swing classics had turned me on to Mildred Bailey, a great singer who was also Coeur d’Alene.
  • 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!

Published by Rex

Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He is a political anthropologist who studies kinship, customary land tenure, and the mining and petroleum industry in Papua New Guinea. He also studies the video game World of Warcraft, and is an advocate for open access scholarly communications. His book "Leviathans at the Gold Mine" was published by Duke University Press.