:: antropologi.info ::

So cool! Alex Golub has discovered that The California Digital Library provides free access to - at the moment - 61 anthropological books in fulltext.

His recommendations: Rob Brightman’s Grateful Prey , The Calligraphic State, Maring Hunters and Traders, History and Tradition in Melanesian Anthropology, The Heart of the Pearlshell, Circumstantial Deliveries (Rodney Needham at his Needhamy-ist), and Wage, Trade and Exchange in Melanesia. >> continue to the Anthropology Book Section, California Digital Library

RedNova News / Seattle Post - Intelligencer

Microsoft Corp.'s research unit is turning to social scientists in a new effort to understand the long-term possibilities for computer technology in developing countries.

A Microsoft Research lab, to be inaugurated tomorrow in Bangalore, India, plans to employ anthropologists, ethnographers and others to observe and document the lives of people in India's rural villages.

A primary aim of the new group is to help Microsoft understand the situation in rural villages before the company tries to create appropriate technologies for them - rather than first creating the technologies and then trying to find areas where they might apply. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Microsoft hires five anthropologists (Inc Magazine, june 2004)
antropologi.info's special on Corporate Anthropology

KUTV.com / ap

PORT BLAIR, India (AP) The last few dozen remaining members of an ancient indigenous tribe in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands said they raced up a mountain to escape a devastating tsunami - and avoid extinction.

"I am the king. They follow what I say," said Jiroki, the king of the Great Andamanese tribe, wearing a red T-shirt and shorts. Contrary to speculation by some anthropologists, his wife said the Great Andamanese did not sense the impending arrival of the tsunamis. >> continue

Remark: Interesting to see how anthropologists "speculate" ... they still dream about the nobel savage. Interesting to see how journalists like the Andamanese to be like. Derogatorily and romantizingly at the same time! they presented them first (example )as "stone age peoples" that want to be left alone. Interesting to read about the king telling us in this article: "We feel nice interacting with the outside world. Earlier our heart was only in hunting," the king said. "There were no movies, nothing."

UPDATE: Michael I. Niman, Alternet, writes:

"The indigenous populations of the Andaman and Nicobar islands have had extensive contact with the outside world. These descendents of African peoples were first visited by Marco Polo who described them as "No better than wild beasts." European slave-traders later raided the islands for slaves. Anthropologists report that slavers continued to raid the islands well into the second half of the 20th century, long after the international slave trade was thought dead."

On a new search page on antropologi.info you can search for information on several anthropology-related websites - among others:

- anthrobase.com (Collection of anthropological texts)
- American Anthropological Association
- SOSIG Social Science Information Gateway
- Wikipedia
- EVIFA (one of the best virtual anthropological libraries (in German and English)
- Anthroglobe (Journal)
- Anthropology Matters (Journal)
- Qualitative Research Net (Journal)

>> continue to antropologi.info Search

Linda McQuaig, The Toronto Star

About the same time the tsunami was hitting the shores of southeast Asia, North Americans were hitting the stores in the usual Boxing Day shopping frenzy. North Americans were behaving in a way we consider "normal." Indeed, the desire to accumulate ever more material possessions is regarded today as not just normal, but basic to human motivation.

The outpouring of concern and generosity toward helpless people halfway around the globe came as something of a surprise here. Could it be that there's more to the human personality than our business-dominated culture encourages us to believe? Maybe we're not all just walking replicas of Homo Economicus — the robot-like character whose motivation revolves around his insatiable appetite for material gain — that lies at the heart of modern economic theory.

Karl Polanyi, the late economic historian and anthropologist argued that the most basic human characteristic — found in every human society across the ages and around the globe — isn't material acquisitiveness but rather a need to relate to other humans, to feel part of a larger community. >> continue (link updated)

Creative Commons

Science Commons is a new project of Creative Commons and will launch early 2005.

The mission of Science Commons is to encourage scientific innovation by making it easier for scientists, universities, and industries to use literature, data, and other scientific intellectual property and to share their knowledge with others. Science Commons works within current copyright and patent law to promote legal and technical mechanisms that remove barriers to sharing. >> continue to Science Commons

Remark: The search engine is already working and a search for anthropology gives you more than 900 matching pages!

(Link via netbib weblog)

The Economist

Traditionally, the English-speaking minority in Quebec kept itself pretty much to itself. If this was once accurate, it is no longer so. Now more than two-thirds of Quebec's 750,000 English-speakers can also speak French—double the proportion of the 1970s. Even in those rich ghettos in western Montreal, French is spoken almost as much as English.

A recent government report on Quebec's English-speakers noted other signs of integration. As Anglos learn to speak French younger and better, frequently choosing to study in French schools, there has been a surge in marriage (or at least coupling) outside the community. Closer contact has eased tensions between what were once known as “the two solitudes” who share Quebec.

With linguistic tension much reduced, the sovereignty movement will need a new cause around which to rally, says Deirdre Meintel, an anthropologist at the University of Montreal who specialises in minorities. “You can be Québécois now without having spoken French all your life,” she says. >> continue

Guardian / ap

Government officials and anthropologists believe that ancient knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds may have saved the five indigenous tribes on the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar islands from the tsunami that hit the Asian coastline Dec. 26.

``They can smell the wind. They can gauge the depth of the sea with the sound of their oars. They have a sixth sense which we don't possess,'' said Ashish Roy, a local environmentalist and lawyer.

It appears that many tribesman fled the shores well before the waves hit the coast, where they would typically be fishing at this time of year. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
HindustanTimes special on the Andaman and Nicobar Islanders