#anthropolog

[nonbinaryfinery0101]

Doctor Who has cursed me in the fact that my anthropology prof brought up that Queen Victoria was a carrier of an unusual gene and my immediate thought was “She’s a carrier of lycanthropy” 

[everydayanth]

Still one of my favorite videos on the internet!

[maryse-johanna]

13/11/2018: My readings feat. messy lecture notes (and failed doodles). The local library has new study spots! the desks are build into the bookshelfs 💕

[mandalinarossaportfolio]

My new project “The Collector” was exhibited in Contemporary Istanbul, Halka Art Project pavillion.

The story of this project has begun with Cabinets of Curiosities which dates back to 1500s. The aristocrats and monarchs at the time would sponsor overseas voyages in search for exotic plants, unseen animals, mythical creatures and every kind of little object one can imagine.These findings were exhibited in cabinets with lots of drawers,shelves and hidden compartments.During the voyages stories of these findings were changing and becoming fictionalized.

When Halka Art Project initiated a project of revitalizing and adapting Cabinets of Curiosities in current time, I was involved in the project and began working immediately.

Reading various anthropological and ethnological voyage books, I had many ideas about how people reacted to the unseen environments and cultures, how the curious westerns affected and/or observed indigenous people who were living serenely on their own. You can read and download these books from archive.org and gutenberg.org :

-Growing up in New Guinea; a comparative study of primitive education,Margaret Mead

-Idle Days in Patagonia, William Henry

-Eskimo Life, Fridtjof Nansen

-My Life With Eskimo, Vilhjalmur Stefansson

-Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, Mark Twain

-The Appendix : http://theappendix.net/issues/2013/7/inside-the-museum-of-natural-historys-hidden-masterpiece ( an article about  gatherers who worked for modern Cabinets of Curiosities that are Museums).

In addition: Cortés and Montezuma,Maurice Collis.

The result was a costume of a strong,open-minded and mobile expeditioner   woman who lived in early 1900s. Her costume is full of pockets filled with specimens of plants,seeds,stones,small tribal artwork,exchange material,moss,animal teeth etc. The pockets are detachable making the ingredients easy to access for further research.

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Yeni projem “Toplayıcı” Contemporary Istanbul kapsamında Halka Sanat Projesi bünyesinde sergilendi.Projenin hikayesi Nadire Kabineler ile başladı.Tarihi 1500'lü yıllara kadar dayanan Nadire Kabineler'de dünyanın herbir köşesinden, keşif veya ticaret yolculuklarında toplanan farklı hayvanlar, masalsı varlıklar, egzotik bitkiler ve akla gelebilecek türlü garip objeler bulunuyordu.Bu buluntular birtakım meraklı soyluların evlerinde birçok gözü olan dolaplarda sergileniyordu.Tabii yolculuklar esnasında buluntuların hikayesi dallanıp budaklanıyor, bitkiler hayvanlara, hayvanlar masalsı varlıklara dönüşüyordu.Halka Sanat Projesi Nadire Kabineler'i yeni zamanda farklı bir şekilde ortaya çıkartmak istediklerinde ben de bu konuya dahil oldum.Proje hazırlık aşamasında çeşitli antropolojik ve etnografik yolculuk kitapları okuyarak o zamanki uzun gemi yolculukları sonucunda karşılaşılan yeniliklere nasıl tepkiler verildiği, batılı meraklıların kendi halinde yaşayan küçük toplulukları nasıl etkilediği ve gözlemlediği konusunda bir takım fikirler edindim. Bu kitaplar archive.org sitesinden bedava olarak indirilip okunabilir:

-Growing up in New Guinea; a comparative study of primitive education,Margaret Mead

-Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, Mark Twain-Idle Days in Patagonia, William Henry

-Eskimo Life, Fridtjof Nansen

-My Life With Eskimo, Vilhjalmur Stefansson

-Cortés and Montezuma,Maurice Collis

-The Appendix Dergisi: http://theappendix.net/issues/2013/7/inside-the-museum-of-natural-historys-hidden-masterpiece ( daha yakın zamana ait,ama aynı amaçlar için modern Nadire Kabineler yani müzelere toplayıcılık yapan kişiler hakkında bir makale)

[davehopton]

I was thunderstruck when I heard mention of a “bonus” over coffee. Later I overheard someone who didn’t work say she would buy a table at an event once her bonus was set. A woman with a business degree but no job mentioned waiting for her “year-end” to shop for clothing. Further probing revealed that the annual wife bonus was not an uncommon practice in this tribe. A wife bonus, I was told, might be hammered out in a pre-nup or post-nup, and distributed on the basis of not only how well her husband’s fund had done but her own performance — how well she managed the home budget, whether the kids got into a “good” school — the same way their husbands were rewarded at investment banks. In turn these bonuses were a ticket to a modicum of financial independence and participation in a social sphere where you don’t just go to lunch, you buy a $10,000 table at the benefit luncheon a friend is hosting.

Wednesday Martin, Poor Little Rich Women

via Kottke

[lexilovespurple]

why do we stop believing in santa?

Why do we stop believing in Santa Clause when many people maintain equally as intangible beliefs throughout most of their lives? As for me, no one told me Santa was not real. I simply “came to my senses” as children are eventually expected to do. Although society may not directly deny the existence of Santa to kids, they must send some sort of message that guides children to realize the “ridiculousness” of such beliefs. However, belief in one or more divine beings is regarded very differently and is held onto throughout entire lifetimes. If we attempt to look at this peculiar aspect of our culture without emotional bias, we could point out the physical manifestations of both belief systems. Christmas morning has presents under a tree that were not previously there, cookies have been eaten, and sometimes a letter is left signed by Santa himself. Belief in a divine being sometimes manifests itself in the physical world through answered prayers or miracles, which are passed on by word of mouth or writing. Since these beliefs are all about faith in something that will never be seen, physical evidence is important because it is all we have to connect the imagined with the perceived. Taking these things into consideration, belief in Santa appears to have more real world support than belief in the divine (assuming a child is unaware the parents are staging the Christmas morning evidence of Santa’s visit).

I do not mean for my musings to be a criticism of religion or belief in higher powers. I merely wish to point out that society not only teaches us what is "real," but it also tells us which aspects of this reality can or should be questioned.

[studystoreuvt-blog]

'We began as savages, and savagery has served us well' #new The Tribal Imagination by Robin Fox

Is the savage in us our friend or our enemy?

  We began as savages, and savagery has served us well—it got us where we are. But how do our tribal impulses, still in place and in play, fit in the highly complex, civilized world we inhabit today? This question, raised by thinkers from Freud to Levi-Strauss, is fully explored in this book by the acclaimed anthropologist Robin Fox. It takes up what he sees as the main—and urgent—task of evolutionary science: not so much to explain what we do, as to explain what we do at our peril.

  Ranging from incest and arranged marriage to poetry and myth to human rights and pop icons, Fox sets out to show how a variety of human behaviors reveal traces of their tribal roots, and how this evolutionary past limits our capacity for action. Among the questions he raises: How real is our notion of time? Is there a human “right” to vengeance? Are we democratic by nature? Are cultural studies and fascism cousins under the skin? Is evolutionary history coming to an end—or just getting more interesting? In his famously informative and entertaining fashion, drawing links from Volkswagens to Bartok to Woody Guthrie, from Swinburne to Seinfeld, Fox traces our ongoing struggle to maintain open societies in the face of profoundly tribal human needs—needs which, paradoxically, hold the key to our survival.

  “In The Tribal Imagination, Robin Fox brings to bear stunning insights from his wide knowledge of human societies and the philosophers, poets, and thinkers who have tried to understand them. He casts brilliant light not just on the human historical experience, but on contemporary issues from Iraq to human rights as well.”—Francis Fukuyama

  Robin Fox, anthropologist, poet, and essayist, is University Professor of Social Theory at Rutgers University and author of Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective and The Red Lamp of Incest: An Enquiry into the Origins of Mind and Society. http://www.robinfoxbooks.com/

  Robin Fox - The Tribal Imagination

€ 33.50 | hardcover | 432 pages