In order to tackle some of the practical aspects of fieldwork and anthropological research, students at the Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikanistik (Munich) have come up with the Working Group on Fieldwork (ArbeitsKreis Feldforschung). Since its creation in October 2002, the AKFeldforschung holds regular sessions dealing with fieldwork techniques, planning, analysis, introspection, etc.. For those participating it leaves plenty room for debating and discussing ‘field issues’ – with students having gained none or first fieldwork experiences. As well, doctoral candidates and some of the Institute’s staff members regularly attend the AK meetings and contribute to it as ‘fieldwork experts’.

Look up this semester’s appealing Programme (application/msword, 28 KB) and join!

The AKFeldforschung usually meets at the Institute on Thursdays at 15 o’clock. Contact us at AKFeldforschung@web.de

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‘Cherchez le Chercheur’ – No. I While the ethnographic fieldworker is famous for producing countless photographic impressions of his own field, the documentary evidences of his presence and involvement in the ethnographic process are rather scarce. Hence, in this upcoming ‘Cherchez le Chercheur’ series on Fridays, I will present photographs which focus on one essential element of the fieldwork setting: the researcher himself.

The pictures stem from my fieldwork project carried out in Kyebi, Akyem Abuakwa (Eastern Region/Ghana, Jan. - Aug. 2002).

Don’t miss next week’s picture!! I will provide the counter-picture (i.e. the researcher’s view) of the ceremonial scene above.

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The Centre for Buddhist Studies (CBS), Sri Lanka, will be holding its first national conference, reports this Newssite from Sri Lanka.

Take a look at the international involved scholars, if you are interested in this topic.

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A new world of music from around the globe will soon be available to students and scholars. A research team from Indiana University and the University of Michigan has received an $875,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create an online digital archive of video recordings and a searchable database for research and teaching., reports ascribe.org.

But we have still to wait a little bit to hear and see the first videos. The project will go online about end of 2004.

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There is an interesting ad campaign commissioned in some major british journals. Read the concerning article in the MediaGuardian,,,

"With the burgeoning Sars epidemic spreading fear among travellers worldwide, the Hong Kong tourist board must be ruing the day it commissioned a series of magazine ads telling readers a visit to the city will 'take your breath away' "...

the whole article can be found here

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"Human Nature Review is a significant source of analysis and commentary for readers at leading universities and research institutes in over one hundred and sixty countries and is one of the most popular sites on the whole world wide web. Our goal is to bring into communication the variety of approaches to the understanding of human nature which have a regrettable tendency to be less in touch with one another than they might. We make welcome writings and discussions on anthropology, archaeology, artificial intelligence, behaviour genetics, cognitive science, [...], sociobiology, and debates about them; history, philosophy and social studies in the human sciences; Darwinian scholarship; hermeneutics; verstehen; biography and autobiography; psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches and so on. This list of topics and disciplines is meant to be suggestive, not exhaustive. [...] We are particularly interested in receiving overviews of recent work in disciplines relevant to the understanding of human nature, e.g., particular human sciences, narrative psychology, including historical and philosophical approaches." The What's New section is a good starting point, providing you with up-to-date reviews and more ... for example the full text of William James' "The variety of religious experience". Try Human Nature's search field -- it does a full text search on the database and gives its findings in a very worthwhile format.

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LAWRENCE, PAUL R. AND NITIN NOHRIA. 2002. Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. [ISBN 0-7879-6385-2.]

Keith S. Harris, Ph.D., Research Director, Department of Behavioral Health, San Bernardino County, CA, USA, wrote a review: "It is not the laboratory but the workplace that is the ideal setting to study human nature, according to Lawrence and Nohria. This book seeks to examine the common drives that shape human behavior, and to show how they evolved, what they evolved to accomplish, and how they still operate in both small and large-group settings. Although this book has much to say about human psychology, authors Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria are not psychologists. Both are professors of organizational behavior at Harvard, and they well know that the individual human cannot be understood distinct from his or her reciprocity groups, of which the epitome is the modern tribe known as an organization." The full text of the review, which was published in Human Nature Review 2003 Volume 3: 263-265 (8 May) is available online. via Anthro-L

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COE, KATHRYN. 2003. The Ancestress Hypothesis: Visual Art as Adaptation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Craig T. Palmer from the Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado has written a review of Coe's book: "This book is one of a growing number of attempts to provide Darwinian explanations for such aspects of human culture as religion, literature, and in this case, visual art. However, it is much more than simply an evolutionary explanation of visual art because the "ancestress hypothesis" is a much broader concept. It has far reaching implications for not only many aspects of human physiology and culture, but also evolutionary theory itself. Many readers will probably find the book less than convincing in some of its arguments about these more general issues. However, its main thesis about visual art is so cogently argued and thoroughly supported with evidence, that the possible implications for the more general issues will be hard to ignore. [...]" The review has been published in Human Nature Review 2003 Volume 3: 254-256 (7 May) and can be read in full here. via Anthro-L

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"We invite you to visit and experience the new Chilean Indigenous People Portal. The main goal is to promote the cultural Indigenous customs and values, showing the spiritual, artistic and cultural production, through articles and features. This project is supported by Chilean Indigenous People Department under The Ministry of Culture of Chile - MINEDUC. In our Portal, available in English and Spanish, we have include useful information, like historical and cultural information about Aymara's, Kolla's, Rapa Nui's, Diaguitas's, Mapuche's, Selknam's etc., Native Languages Dictionaries, Digital Books, Music, Video and a interesting directory of web linkse. It's our special interest to give you any support about Chilean Indigenous People Issues, so do not hesitate to contact us. We have news every month and if you want to stay up dated we suggest you to subscribe to our monthly Newsletter. Thank you for your time and let us send you an hello in different native languages: "Kamisaraki" in Aymara, "Iorana" in Rapa Nui, "Mari Mari" in Mapuche." via Anthro-L

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SENGUPTA, GAUTAM AND SHEENA PANJA (Eds.). 2003. Archaeology of Eastern India: New Perspectives. Kolkata: Centre for Archaeological Studies & Training, Eastern India. [viii, 623 p. ills. (partly col.). maps. 23 cm. List Price: $ 40.00, ISBN: 8190149903]

For more books on India see K. K. Agencies, the "online store for Indian publications". via Anthro-L

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Emeritus Professor of Computer Sciences and Linguistics Sheldon Klein shares some of his work with us: The rather hard to find revised and expanded French language version of "Modelling Propp and Lévi-Strauss in a Meta-symbolic Simulation System." in Patterns in Oral Literature, edited by H. Jason & D. Segal, World Anthropology Series, The Hague: Mouton, 1977, is now available for downloading as a .pdf file, with a new Lévi-Strauss model, a revised Propp model, and 60 new computer generated folktales. The full program is included, and is extensively commented with references to specific pages in V. Propp's "Morphology of the Folktale", University of Texas Press, 1968. via Anthro-L

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