The 27 years old German Markus Giesler is not only North America's presumably youngest professor in marketing but also gained some experience as an 'Netnograf': UNISPIEGEL writes that "just like an anthropologist enters the Amazon jungle, Giesler enters the World Wide Web. He classifies the cyber consumers into tribes and researches into their rituals and religions. ... He has observed the Napster community which bootlegs music titles from each other's hard disk. Giesler mocks that they go after the slogan of 'liberty for information', an interpretation of Marx' and Engel's 'abolishment of property'. But instead of some profane internet thiefs he discovered a www-community (or congregation?) who wants to 'cleanse itself from the evil of music consuming culture' through their deeds".in GermanWie ein Ethnologe den Amazonasdschungel betritt Giesler das World Wide Web. Er unterteilt die Cyber-Konsumenten in Stämme und erforscht deren Rituale und Religionen. Als so genannter Netnograf hat er die Napster-Gemeinde beobachtet, die sich gegenseitig Musiktitel von den Festplatten raubkopiert. "Dabei gaben sie die Parole ›Freiheit der Information‹ aus - frei nach Marx' und Engels' Devise ›Abschaffung von Eigentum‹", spottet Giesler. Statt profaner Internet-Diebe entdeckte er eine www-Gemeinde, die sich durch ihr Tun von dem "Übel der Musikkonsumkultur reinigen" wollte.

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Edited by german sociocultural anthropologists Hartmut Lang and Michael Schnegg the website "Ethnographic Methods publishes a series of methodological material for anthropologists. At the moment it contains two types of publications. The methodological volumes (currently in German only) give detailed introductions to specific methods of data collection and analysis. They are practical guides, and are suited as teaching material. The data collection tools are a growing compilation of ethnographic questionnaires, observation sheets and other material used for data gathering. We publish these "first hand" tools to enable future researchers to profit from the work that has already been done. We seek data collection tools where the results of the analysis have already been published. It is the purpose of these publications to make ethnography a more transparent enterprise." Especially the topics 'ethnographic census' and 'social network analysis' are treated. Some in the profession may shy away from "those quantitative methods", but e.g. in cyberanthropology, especially research on online-communities, in my opinion a sound quantitative basis is obligatory. And if it's only for orientation's sake.

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The Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie in Vienna started a project together with the university Auckland researching the cultural contact between maori soldiers from Nw Zealand and austrians during world war II. The soldiers were prisoners of war in austria. The involvement of indigenous people in world war II is currently a topic of public interest in New Zealand. Die Presse reports (german). Via Lorenz Khazaleh