The interesting about this picture (a Halakwulup Boy from Tierra del Fuego/Southern South America, photographed from Martin Gusinde) (1)(Gusinde, Martin: Die Feuerland-Indianer. Bd.3 : Die Halakwulup. Vom Leben und Denken der Wassernomaden in West-Patagonien. Mödling : Anthropos, 1974, Picture 28 in the picture addendum at the end of the book) is that the question came to my mind, if this boy is actually "playing indian", while using a toy arrow and a toy bow. Of course not, he may only play "hunting", as he is already indian by definition. But this we can only decide to say by thinking about all the circumstances, and it involves thinking about abstract attributions. Because the mere action, which he is done during the game, would be definitly similar to the action by all other childrens in the world while "playing indian".

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In Berlin/Germany next week starts a conference on "global icons", which is for example the face of Che Guevara, and how people in a globalised world, especially the youth, build their identity on those icons. [I read only the short introduction, but I am missing thoughts about the individual use of those icons in different cultural communities. I have the feeling that those icons are often filled with a different content in different cultures.] Via Dienstraum

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The german computer magazine c't did a review on special notebooks that can handle rain, dust and crushes. You can find it in c't 9/2004, page 106-117 (Available in our library). But be aware, that you have to pay between 2300.- and 5600.- Euros for those. And there are also some ergonomic disadvantages: Who want's to write on a better rubber keyboard?

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The Magazine on European Research has published a special issue on Art & Science: "'I am grateful to certain artists for helping me step back and achieve the essential critical distance which techno-science requires today.' This 'saying' of Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond dates from 1996, but it has not lost one iota of its truth to this day." Online available in English, German and French (see top right on the page) and completely downloadable as .pdf, too (see bottom left of the page).

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Clay Shirky has written an interesting piece over at many2many, called Moblogging from the front and the new Reformation: "Once the Church lost the ability to control the direct perception of scripture, thanks to the printing of (relatively) cheap bibles in languages other than Latin, their loss of political hegemony followed. This is what we are seeing now relative to the military's control of information. A year or so ago, someone in the DoD told me that the thing that would most affect the prosecution of the war in Iraq would be images of DAB's -- Dead American Bodies. The unplanned spread of photos of coffins, and now of torture victims, means that control of this part of the war is outside the military's hands." Read all ... via many2many

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As the government of bavaria/germany is still planning to cut the funds of our institute, the students organization of the Institut für Ethnologie and Afrikanistik wrote a position paper (application/pdf, 104 KB) (german) declaring the importance of the anthropological research which is done in Munich. Please sign on the lists in case of affirmation (even if you studying it as minor subject). Lists can be found in the tea kitchen and in the classes.

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"'Nerd' is a term invented by Dr. Seuss in 'If I ran [into] the zoo' in 1950, where it represented a small comically angry-looking and unpleasant humanoid creature - 'And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch a Preep and a Proo a Nerkle a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!' Initially popularised in the 1970s as a reference to uninteresting persons, as the information technology revolution turned playful hippies into serious businessmen, later films such as 'Revenge of the Nerds' [1984] granted them intelligence as bespectacled, but unathletic maths student wizards (in opposition to the athletic and sportive jovial 'jock') who turn the world upside down with their wizardry." (Houtman & Zeitlyn 1996: 2, fn 1 -- hyperlinks added by me)

HOUTMAN, GUSTAAF AND DAVID ZEITLYN. 1996. Information technology and anthropology, Anthropology Today 12(3): 1-3.

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Finally Africars is online! The beautifully desigend website is a project by one of our students, originally stemming from his own extensive fieldwork in western Africa. And I am so generous a man to host it on our university's server. The overall theme of the site is the cultural adoption of the automobile in Africa. The site contains vast image-material which in itself already is worthwhile to view. Those capable of reading German will find accompanying texts (work in progress). The whole site will grow more -- there are already some interesting parts in the making.

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Corinne Neudorfer, currently researching in Laos about Community Based Tourism, gives us insight about the typical problems that appear during fieldwork: about missing interview partners, missing laptops and of course, hours of illness in a hospital:

In the run up to my fieldwork I had to write proposals, make thoughts about my work and my approach. It was annoying, but I also thought that it can only be helpful to make some methodical thoughts. 'In the field its always different' - people say that so often, and yes, I knew it before, but compared to how different it is really then, its a useless sentence.

Well, I have to quit now with my short report, as my head buzzes, and coming to the hospital this morning was not a nice experience. To all that misfortune, I heared today, that my laptop disappeared from where I left it back in the north at the development organization. The laotic coworkers weren't able to find it. Apocalypse! I do all of my work on the laptop! I hope that this all is a huge missunderstanding.

Don't blame Corinne for her english, I've done the translation and some editing, KerLeone

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"Sein Ding machen" is an anthropological fieldwork (german) about the hiphop community of Basel/Switzerland. The author, currently living in Oslo/Norway, set up a forum for feedback or questions, so students also doing work on hiphop may contact him!

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"More than 70 people who work on free and open source software in Africa gathered in Namibia between March 15 and 19 to teach, to learn, and to network. This meeting, called Africa Source, was the first event of its kind, bringing together developers from roughly 25 countries on the continent, as well as visitors from a dozen countries outside Africa." A report from the CEO of AllAfrica.com With some interesting thoughts. Read some thoughts from a hacker from Accra, Ghana, why he thinks that african developers have to focus on african problems, and why india is not a good model. Via SWR

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From 11. June 2004 through 13. June 2004 the Evangelische Akademie in collaboration with the Initiative Pro Afrika stages a congress called Africa's youth -- Africa's future" at Bad Boll, Germany. You can download the program as a .pdf file.

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