Adventures of a Neophile @thedassieexperiment - Tumblr Blog

Textbook: "By the 1980s, Mudimbe was installed at Haverford College"

Me: ... hold on there, wait, WHAT?

Textbook: " ... in Pennsylvania..."

Me: yup, that's the one.

Textbook: "through the efforts of anthropologist Wyatt MacGaffrey, an expert in Zairan religious movements and political history. At Haverford, Mudimbe taught sociology and anthropology courses"

Me: DANGG. Why couldn't I have been born thirty years earlier?? Also does this mean Mark Gould knows Mudimbe? Also -- woah...

#life abroad

Kalk Bay, Cape Town

#Street #Fishing #Village #Atlantic #Moon #Table Mountain #Cat #Seal #Stairs #Tabby #Beach #Ocean #Waves

Funtimez & Shenanigans at Home

Rainbows; our cat Naartjie; Karan's birthday pudding

#South Africa #Uni life

jamaisjamais

Cederberg mountains, with baboons for Dan

side note: heavily edited with picassa, because these photos came out funny.

#Baboons #Look-outs #Mountains #Ocean #Cederberg #South Africa

My distinction between anthropology and sociology:

Anthropology translates unwritten cultural assumptions and norms into written, analyzable forms. From its roots in colonial and imperialist discourse, its goals have always been to explain the "Other" to the Western world. Following the dissolution of most explicitly imperial regimes in the mid-20th century, and the sudden desire by so-called 'natives' to speak for themselves, anthropologists ceased explaining the "other" to the "west" and began instead to explain EVERYTHING to themselves.

Sociology examines how unwritten cultural assumptions influence the products of that culture; that is, examining the connections between the unwritten or implicit and the written, where "written" stands in for all concrete forms of cultural production. Its history is closely linked to anthropology's, but has always been more concerned with analyzing inequality and marginality within a single society.

I know explaining sociology through anthropology, or vice versa, is problematic, but it's because I've been reading a lot of meta-anthropological texts lately and only have texts explicitly produced as 'sociology' or 'sociological' to guide me. All of this is coming from my reading of standard anthropological and sociological texts from before the 1960s, contemporary sociological texts, contemporary post-colonial discourse, and a LOT of literary and cultural theory, so it's pretty biased, but since I've been thinking about it a lot the last couple of days, I figured I might as well get it down. I'm sure there are a TON of counter-examples to disprove it, but it seemed like a better answer than the standard "Anthropologists only know how to do ethnography" that I get from sociologists and the "Sociologists only care about the West" coming from anthropologists.

... thoughts?

#discursive dilemmas

meanwhile, on Skype... #1

For Dan -- "giraffes and lions and things"

hokay, family, friends, and creepsters, so here's the thing: I would post more, but I'm super lazy and Finnegan's The Oral and Beyond just keeps calling to me. So I won't.

south african skies

inspired by cici

Things not to when you have 24 hours to write a 20-page exam...

read Lionel Abrahams instead of writing your exam

talk to a ballr prof about praise poetry and the black consciousness movement for an hour instead of writing your exam

drink coffee at 4 am instead of writing your exam

eat an entire pizza instead of writing your exam

post on tumblr instead of writing your exam

jump in the pool at midnight, fully clothed, instead of writing your exam

... well, shoot.

I have never, ever, EVER in my entire life seen so many bugs, or been so grateful for bats and geckos. I love bugs -- they're some of the most interesting-looking animals -- but I wimped out after half an hour or so. I understand schizophrenics much, much better now.

the peacock was quite pleased the next day, though

#bugs #squeam factor #gecko

Day 4 - Reitfontein and Haskeen Pan

I wish I could differentiate more clearly between landscapes. The truth is, other than being flat rather than flowing with dunes, the land here seems much like that in the Kglagadi. The soil is a little grayer, a little less red, which I can only imagine is due to regional agricultural practices among the Meir, about whom I would like to learn much, much more. The close relationship between the people and the environment seems to be driven here half by tourism and half by necessity. To the former, it seems like the commodification of Sankhoi cultural practices has led to the proliferation of craft stores and show villages in and around the Kgalagadi, so that the economic incentives lie today in maintaining [some of] yesterday's culture. To speak somewhat more extensively to the latter motivation, however, it seems fair to note that economic constraints here are great. Houses, though well-constructed, are small and more or less uniform in their shape, which may indicate a lack of physical materials and of leisure time - they are clearly built with an eye towards simple efficiency. Much of the architecture reflects colonial models of construction, an ever-present reminder to the unaccustomed eye of the cultural violence in this place's past. The shrubland seems to lend itself well to grazing cattle... or at least, the predominance of sheep and goats on the landscape implies as much.

If I had to imagine the end of the world,I suppose this would be fairly close to it: arid flats with few trees and only the shrubbiest of shrubberies, and a single road stretching north-south for ages. The blithely grazing cattle and unseen individuals arguing in Afrikaans does nothing to dispell this image, nor does the single peacock wandering serenely by. Its brilliant plumage is nothing short of surreal against the brown and gray landscape... though the landscape, distinguished as it is against the sunset sky, seems an almost perfect compliment to the bird's casual egotism. The truth is, this is not human territory: people may, and certainly do, live here, but it has not yet been redefined to reflect human habitation. We remain an invasive species, flourishing but uncomfortable.

#Mier #Kalahari #Northern Cape #Personal #Long