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IPS News Service

As is the case in much of Africa, cultural and religious factors in Cameroon have proved formidable obstacles to the advancement of women in the workplace. Traditional beliefs dictate that a women’s place is in the home, prompting many parents to take their daughters out of school at an early age – and allow them to be married. Information technology has proving especially useful in showing women a way out of the cultural cul-de-sac they so often find themselves in. >> continue

MORE ON IT AND DEVELOPMENT
Digital Opportunity Channel (oneworld.net / digital divide network)

Scoop, New Zealand

For the first time in its fifteen-year history, the world's most prestigious award in marine conservation has been given to an anthropologist.

Dr. Shankar Aswani, an honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Auckland, will use his Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation to continue his work with communities in the western Pacific's Solomon Islands. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Shankar Aswani's homepage with more information on his projects

San Francisco Chronicle

Five years into the millennium, Japan's most visible export isn't economic, but cultural. The jury's still out on whether anime (Japanese animation), manga, toys, gadgets and fashion will sweep across middle America. "This stuff is getting globalized like never before," says Anne Allison, chair of cultural anthropology at Duke University, whose examination of the subject, "Millennium Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination" (University of California Press) will be out in 2006.

"In the last decade, especially in the last five years, Japanese pop culture, particularly youth culture -- anime, manga, Pokemon, kids cards -- has circulated not just in the United States, but in Western Europe, East Asia and South America." >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Interview with anthropologist Anne Allison about her research in Japan (Japan Review)
Book review: Japan Pop!: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture (Japan Review) , see same book reviewed by H-Net Review

The New Zealand Herald

For New Zealanders the land represents everything that is pure and authentic. It's. the essence of who we are. We love it so much that we fear losing it which is why we get so upset about foreign ownership and Maori claims to the foreshore. But Australians see the land as something to be tamed. The land is something to be observed, or crossed, not something to integrate with.

Buy it or not - and being from an advertising agency they hope you do - these are some of the results of an eight-month study by FCB New Zealand. Chief executive Nick Baylis analysed advertisements in both countries. "This piece of research gives us the jump on everyone else because it uses semiotic and anthropological studies that people in New Zealand just don't use" >> continue

ABC News

Robert Schrauf, associate professor of applied linguistics and an anthropologist at Penn State, says he was a bit puzzled when he began analyzing data he collected that shows that regardless of age or culture, we have far more words in our vocabulary that express negative rather than positive emotions.

Schrauf started searching the scientific literature to see if he could find an answer, but he found more questions. Studies of 37 different languages turned up seven words that have very similar meanings. They are joy, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame and guilt. "Seven words, and only one positive," Schrauf notes. "Isn't that awesome?" >> continue

Media Monitors Network

A valuable new contribution to unearth and interpret America's bizarre conduct is Mahmood Mamdani's study "GOOD MUSLIM, BAD MUSLIM". The author, a distinguished political scientist and anthropologist, explains that the book grew out of a talk at a church in New York after 9/11 when to bear an identifiably Muslim name was to be made aware that Islam had become a political identity in America.

Perhaps the heart of this book can be found in the first chapter titled "Culture Talk; Or How Not To Talk About Islam And Politics". The author is able to penetrate the limits of conventional discourse on democracy and dictatorship, poverty and wealth and also succeeds in locating "culture" within the chasm of globalisation. >> continue

SEE ALSO:

Interview with Mahmood Mamdani (Asia Source)

Essay: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim – An African Perspective - by Mahmood Mamdani (Social Science Research Council)

Mahmood Mamdani reviews the book "Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah" by Olivier Roy" and "The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West" by Gilles Kepel (Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005)

Detroit News

Portable music players create their own culture. iPod users, who also call themselves "iPeople," say they can't get enough of the music downloaded from computer hard drives, the Internet and CD collections. Cultural anthropologists and techno experts wonder what the impact of their actions will be. At this point, experts are still grappling for answers. >> continue (updated link, original no longer available)

SEE ALSO:
iPod Nation? (The Tufts Daily, updated link)

The Soth End Newspaper

It seems every aspect of American life is undergoing a “Globalization” except one — our literary culture. Explanations for this phenomenon vary, from lack of interest to lack of availability, but one thing is certain: A majority of Americans have a profound disinterest in the literary and cultural works of other countries. >> continue