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First review of Leviathans is in

Rex

I’m happy to say that the first review of my book Leviathans at the Gold Mine has appeared and that is it positive. You can read the review here. The author of the review is David Eller — whose textbook I’ve used in my intro class before, but who I’ve never met. The most frequent adjectives he uses to describe me and the book are ‘ingenious’ ‘exciting’ and ‘fascinating’, although I’m most flattered by the idea that one of my chapters is “calm but ultimately searing”. I don’t think I planned to be ‘searing’ but… I’m glad that Eller found it so.

I’ve also been told that the book has been adopted for use in two classes, so I’m glad to see that someone is taking the time read it after all the time I put in to writing it. So… thanks to everyone for their continued (and positive) reception of the volume!

My annotated bibliography of Marshall Sahlins is available

Rex

I’m pleased to announce that my annotated bibliography of Marshall Sahlins’s work is now available from Oxford University Press. Although one typo has already been found (!) I’m still very proud of this piece, which I did to show my respect for the chair of my dissertation committee. I’m very satisfied with the result, although it will have to be revised as he continues to publish! I normally would turn down requests from closed-access publishers, but the topic and the form were both too interesting for me to turn down.

Quoted in a BBC piece on ‘uncontacted tribes’

Rex

There’s a good new piece about ‘uncontacted tribes’ in Latin America. I did an interview with the author and I’m quoted in it — I’d recommend it:

Anthropology: The sad truth about uncontacted tribes

Here’s the quote:

“This gets to the heart of a common misconception surrounding isolated tribes such as the one in Acre: that they live in a bubble of wilderness, somehow missing the fact that their small corner of the world is in fact part of a much greater whole – and one that is dominated by other humans. “Almost all human communities have been in some contact with one another for as long as we have historical or archaeological records,” says Alex Golub, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “Human prehistory is not like that game Civilization where you start with a little hut and the whole map is black.”

Any time I can promote Sid Meier and anthropology at the same time, I’m happy.

My review of Keir Martin’s book is out

Rex

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.

A drash on Korach

Rex

(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” →

My review of Digital Anthropology has been published

Rex

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.