‘Diversity is good; difference is bad’

“ ‘Diversity is good; difference is bad.’ This is the common view in European minority debates. As a result, the class component disappears, and an unacceptably vague catch-all concept of culture is allowed to predominate, even in much of the research literature”  Thomas Hylland Eriksen
The Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen (the writer of ‘Engaging Anthropology: [...]

Playing with Children and other cultural oddities…

The article’s a month old now, but I find myself still thinking about it, so I thought I’d share. The Boston Globe ran a piece entitled, ‘Leave Those Kids Alone,’ about the adult practice of playing with children. You can find the original article here.
The article commits its own grievous errors of cross-cultural [...]

‘Caravanserai: Journey Among Australian Muslims’ by Hanifa Deen

In her book ‘Caravanserai: Journey Among Australian Muslims’, Australian writer Hanifa Deen says:
I grew up in the forties and fifties of the last century, almost a lifetime ago, when Muslims were invisible. We were called ‘Mohammedans’ and nobody knew much about us, or really bothered with us; we were too small to be a threat, [...]

New ban on female circumcision in Egypt

Jovan brought to my attention a Yahoo! news item reporting that Egypt has just banned all female circumcision (aka female genital mutilation or FGM). There is a decade’s history of the practice being banned in Egypt, yet it has persisted. In 1996, the Ministry of Health banned any state-affiliated medical personnel from involvement [...]

Web 2.0 – Marx v. Socrates (what would Sapir say?)

In early 2006, Andrew Keen published a polemic in the Weekly Standard in which he argued that Web 2.0 was taking us down a dangerous cultural path. He was troubled about the development of new Internet-based technologies that allowed just about anyone with a computer to be able to “to publish weblogs, digital movies, and [...]

Early fetal gender detection (gender contagion?)

A U.K.-based company markets an early fetal gender detection test; they claim remarkable accuracy (“99%”) at only 6 weeks gestation. DNA Worldwide’s website describes the test as involving a “blood spot” obtained by doing a finger prick that the woman then mails in to their laboratory, and claims that results published in a [...]

Kentucky’s new Creation Museum (Adam and Eve were really hot!)

Hallelujah! The Creation Museum has just opened its doors this week in Kentucky, U.S.A, with 4,000 visitors the first day. Armed guards dressed in black with attack dogs patrolled the grounds, presumably to deter the handful of atheist protestors who showed up from thinking they could get away with sabotage. Inside, animatronic, [...]

SMILE :-)

Peter Singer, a well-known influential Australian philosopher says, ‘Smiling is a universal human practice, although readiness to smile at strangers varies according to culture’. In his article ‘No Smile Limit’ http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/singer22 ,he writes about a council project to encourage people to smile in the city of Port Philip in
Australia. It is an interesting project to create [...]

Multiculturalism in movies

These days not only social anthropologists and sociologists, but also film-makers are dealing with ‘multiculturalism’ in their projects. Mira Nair is one of those filmmakers. In her latest film ‘The Namesake’ she tells the story of a family who goes to the US from India to start a new life. Below is the full [...]

May 4-6 2007 Message Sticks Indigenous Film Festival in Sydney

I always think indigenous youth in
Australia should be encouraged to study social anthropology so that they can engage in their own culture and also make a living out of it. I don’t know if there are any indigenous anthropologists in Australia, but when I saw some of the feature films and documentaries made by indigenous [...]