meta-Stories of anthropology: for anthro and by anthro: 2022

In reply to a listserv question about books for young people with a cross-cultural or anthropological angle, a few colleagues replied. Here are their suggested books.

________________________________________________

I've bought a bunch of books like the ones I'll list below for both my kids (long ago) and grandkids (who are almost your grandkids' ages) and they've always enjoyed these. For kids, I think a personalized/children's perspective like what these books offer seem to grab their attention. My son (a history buff from early on) also loved books on ancient history; the fictional newspaper format of some of these also grabbed him when he was around 11-12. My daughter also loved the "American Girl" biographies of imagined girls from different places around the world.

Hope these ideas are helpful!

Children Just Like Me: A new celebration of children around the world

A Life Like Mine: How Children Live Around the World

The Usborne Book of Living Long Ago: Everyday life through the Ages

History News: The Roman News

--FICTION--

R. L. LaFevers, Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos

Karuna Riazi, The Gauntlet

Caroline Lawrence, Roman Mysteries series

Eliot Schrefer's series of books about great apes, beginning with Endangered

Any of the Rick Riordan Presents series, such as Kwame Mbila Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky and Roshani Chokshi Aru Shah and the End of Time

D. J. MacHale's Pendragon series, beginning with The Merchant of Death

And an older classic, Zilpha Keatley Snyder The Egypt Game

...These are all novels rather than nonfiction, but at this age I think the most important thing is to engage their imagination. Another good bet might be David Macaulay's books on architecture (Castle, Cathedral, Pyramid, etc.), which look like picture books but are actually quite information-dense fictionalized but realistic stories of how these ancient monuments were created, and for a sense of archaeological practice, The Motel of the Mysteries, which tells a story of future archaeologists excavating a twentieth-century motel and coming to completely mistaken conclusions.

Barbara Crane Navarro, 2014, Amazon Rainforest Magic: The Adventures of Namowe, a Yanomami boy.

- One of several children's books on Yanomami, but seems like the best.

Navarro is a French artist. For a dozen years she has devoted several months annually to living with Yanomami in Venezuela and Brazil. They inspired her artistic practice which includes creations to draw public attention to the devastation of the Yanomami and their rainforest habitat. Also check her Rainforest Art Project online.

Just announced from the Royal Anthropological Institute - a selection of film titles now available on the streaming service at Kanopy:

https://www.kanopy.com/en/category/63039

=-=-= original announcement from the RAI film officer:

We are happy to announce that a selection of films from our extensive catalogue of enthnographic and anthropological films is now available on the educational streaming platform Kanopy.

Films are available to stream for free through subscribing institutions, including public libraries and many universities. Log in via your institution and start watching now.

spotlight on Archaeology - people & their environment via material traces recovered & posited

The American Anthropological Association features a different one of its 3-dozen plus Sections. This time it is the Archaeology Division.

See the recommended things to hear, watch, and read:

Watching

Community as Rebellion: Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color, YouTube
Reclaiming Our Heritage: The Monacan Indian Nation of Virginia, The Archaeology Channel
Diving for the Clotilda: The Archaeology, History, and Legacy of the Last Known Slave Ship, YouTube
White Hill Plantation: Excavation Units, YouTube

Listening

The Sounds of Borders, AnthroPod
Classic Tides | Peasants and the Medieval Countryside, Tides of history
The New Science of Archaeoecology, The Archaeology Show
More Parts of Cladh Hallan, The Dirt

Reading

Doing

DHR Virginia Department of Historic Resources Threatened Sites Program Ongoing
Fairfield Fridays Fairfield Archaeology Park, Hayes VA | Fridays 10 - 4:00pm EDT
"A City Built on Ships: Reconstructing 18th-Century Ships Excavated from the Alexandria Waterfront" Online | October 26, 7:00pm EDT
Advocacy for Archaeologists: Building Strong Relationships with Local, State, and Federal Policymakers Online | December 8, 1 - 2:00pm EDT

Shopping

Following

=-=-=-=-= SEE ALSO

AAA Resources

Advances in Archaeological Practice, Cambridge Core
Herding Heritage, Anthropology News
Archaeology in 2021: Repatriation, reclamation, and reckoning with historical trauma, American Anthropologist

Monday, September 26, 2022

museums and genocide episodes showcased

There have been so many instances (Bosnia/Serbia 1992, Rwanda 1998, way back to 1915 Armenia, 1820s Trail of Tears in USA, Cossacks, Shtetl pogroms); see also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

Still more: Biblical record of Jews escaping Egyptian bondage and crossing the Jordan river to kill local residents of 'promised' land. Today in Israel the Holocaust is put in prominent, clear view at Yad Vashem. Native peoples throughout the New World were killed actively and passively, bodily and culturally in many instances, methods, and locations. Tasmania and the continent of Australia is filled with injustices, too. And in mid-September 2022 the dictator of the Russian Federation, #PutinWarCriminal, is targeting ethnic minorities to be destroyed in Ukraine by being pushed into the killing zone.

Here and there the subject of genocide is showcased in a museum form - both in static display, but also in programming events to generate discussion and awareness and further documentation of personal accounts.

The suppressing, sterilization, and killing of people and cultural landscape of the Turkic peoples in the west part of China since 2017 joins the Burmar's Path to Genocide exhibit is quite substantial and has been up for nearly two years now. The physical exhibit is in USHHM and also can be toured online (they do a number of presentations in Cox Bazaar and with the Rohingya community): https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/burmas-path-to-genocide

Thursday, September 22, 2022

Local accent - English spoken in Yorkshire, Britain's north

Roman occupiers put the sound of the city sited on the banks of the river Ouse into Latin letters as "Eboracum." Viking occupiers 400 years later heard the name as "Jorvik," from which people today call it York and which settlers at the meeting of the Hudson and East Rivers at Manhattan took as the reference for NEW York.

In this 5-minute video there are several speakers young and old from Yorkshire, as well as a hint of Northumbria (Geordie) or else from the Scottish borders, whose vocabulary, rhythms, and accents display the Yorkshire accent. The subject is a sad one about deadly sepsis: Hannah Brown whose flu-like symptoms suddenly flared into mortal illness which the hospital was unable to stop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLpaTYDeXG0

Monday, August 1, 2022

Pre-college anthropology examples (panel discussion) 2022

Many of us stumbled upon the fascinating world we now make careers in. But more and more places purposefully introduce young people to ideas and methods for understanding identity, culture, and context in time and place. Many weeks ago The Royal Anthropological Institute held an online panel discussion on past and current instances of anthropology being taught and schools and (secondary school) in Scotland and in England. Last week they announced the recording (1:52) for viewing of the session and Q and A that followed (begins from 1:10:00), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYM6p4Jb9YM

Within the conversation during QA there were comparisons offered from Kenya, Italy, Israel, and Germany, among other places.

Whether you watch for children in your own family and for friends, or it is an abiding interest in advancing anthropology more generally in schools around you, this session offers a lot of good examples of overcoming obstacles, opening eyes, and enlisting help of others adjacent or amenable to anthropology for pre-college learners.

The commenting function on the video is not activated, but you can always send email to www.therai.org.uk or pursue contacts given in the recording itself.

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Online "laugh, laugh" spellings in 26 languages

Sample from full article at https://preply.com/en/d/laughing-around-the-world-map--lp

1 - Thai: "55555" is the most curious graphic representation and the reason behind it is because the number 5 in Thai is pronounced "haa". To laugh a lot you will see 55555555+(+) adding the "+" sign.

2 - Portuguese: In both Portugal and Brazil, laughter is written "kkkkk" but you will also find "rsrsrs" (abbreviation of "riso", meaning "laughter") and the ironic "rarara".

3 - Turkish: "hahaha", "ahahah", "jsjsjsjs", "weqeqwqewqew" or, the funniest option, random letters like: "dksajdksajdoşad" (which is the most common) are used to laugh.

4 - Malay: because "ha" x 3 times equals "hahaha", Malay speakers write "Ha3Ha3Ha3" or "Ha3". They also write laughter the way an English speaker writes, like "haha" or "ha, ha".

Sunday, June 5, 2022

About Black Accent, "blaccent"

excerpt from https://boingboing.net/2022/06/04/the-history-of-blaccent.html

The concept of "Blaccent" or African American Vernacular English will always elude me. I don't mean that on a conceptual level, but rather a practical one since I "talk white." My voice has been a source of great pain throughout my life since the simple act of speaking earns me the ire, even if unintentionally, of a large swath of Black Americans. Whenever I meet other Black people, projections about my past, connection to my culture, and self-love are hurled before me as conversational obstacles outside of the already daunting process of forging a human connection.

Video link, https://youtu.be/8mXaccYFKRQ

Saturday, May 14, 2022

Writing the past for people without history

Story about one of Norway's 16 cities during the Middle Ages, excavated in 30 seasons from the early 1950s until 1981 and producing 45,000 artifacts and many human remains, too. Only now is a new generation taking the work of interpreting the excavated materials.

Uncovering the Secrets of a Forgotten Viking Town - Atlas Obscura

Of course there are many more societies without written records than there are ones with a system of writing or other form of keeping records. Now in 2022 still there are something between 6700 and 6900 human languages, of which just 100 or so read and write in the same language that they speak. However, population-wise a sizable majority of living-breathing humans speak just one of 20 or 30 languages. All the diversity in the remaining ones accounts for a fraction of those walking the planet. In other words, "people without history" (part of the title for Eric Wolf's famous book from the 1980s) are relatively few persons, but relatively most languages/societies. Stated in reverse, the people who do record history account for relatively few societies, but numerically far outnumber the souls who live out their lives with no writing use.

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

recorded lecture 4/2022 , "Robo-Sexism: Gendering AI and Robots in Japan and ..."

"Robo-Sexism: Gendering AI and Robots in Japan and the United States (and Elsewhere)" HYBRID event from April 22, 2022. recorded at https://vimeo.com/703001303

DESCRIPTION

In humans, gender constitutes an array of learned behaviors that are cosmetically enabled and enhanced. Gender(ed) behaviors are both socially and historically shaped and are also contingent upon many situational influences, including individual choices. How is gender assigned in actual (as opposed to fictional) robots? Robertson will explore the sex/gender stereotypes and operational functions informing the design and embodiment of artificial intelligence (AI) and robots, especially humanoids and androids.

Robots have been imagined, designed, and deployed in rhetorical and tangible forms alike to reinforce conservative models of sex/gender roles, ethnic nationalism, and "traditional" family structures. Robertson considers the ramifications of "retro-tech" and also nascent efforts to redress robo-sexism.

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Speaking with an accent - 7 min. explainer

Presenter comes from West Lancashire, adjacent to Liverpool's own "liverpudlian" (scouse) accent and illustrates some of the forces that come into play when creating the particular way that people speak in a specific landscape. Examples are given from among the 56 recognized varieties across the British Isles. Often the best (conserved, traditional) illustrations can be heard in preschool children with contact with grandparents; also among livelihoods closely associated with the land (and sea), such as farmers and fishermen.

Why do we have accents?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXaorSYACPo

Monday, March 7, 2022

Film Festival-7, indigenous languages today and tomorrow

=-= crossposting March 7, 2022 film festival organizer's email message

This year, our festival showcased 45 languages through 35 exceptional films that span over 16 regions around the world. Your support contributes to our continued success and the quality of the festival.

If you enjoyed this year's festival and would like to revisit some of the programming, you can explore open access films on our website and watch roundtable sessions on our YouTube channel. You can also stay up-to-date with the festival by subscribing to our mailing list for occasional newsletters about our films, events, and related programming.

Gracias, tekk, mahalo, merci, and thank you!

—The Mother Tongue Film Festival Team

7th Annual Mother Tongue Film Festival

February 17 – March 4, 2022

Thursday, January 13, 2022

Exhibit "Race: are we so different?" now online thanks to Google-Arts/culture initiative

See https://artsandculture.google.com/story/race-are-we-so-different/ugKy-3EjEtQeIg

Little by little the google form of spreading access to collections and displays grows each year.

meta-Stories of anthropology: for anthro and by anthro

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

World Council of Anthropological Associations, WCAA - video list

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

children's books for cross-cultural & anthropology learning

Sunday, November 6, 2022

in the month of November - focus on Indigenous people today

Friday, October 21, 2022

Watching ethnographic films online (Kanopy streaming service via many libraries)