While parts of europe (e.g. netherlands and germany) are discussing the future of the multicultural society, about integration of alien cultures, about "paralell societies" inside nations, about the right of nations to force people to learn the language of the nation if they imigrate, about the right of cultural supremacy, about words like "Leitkultur" (leading culture), I am again recognizing, that cultural anthropology, the leading science dealing with questions like this, is not involved. Don't we have the answers? Are we involved? If not, why not? Are we all on fieldwork, if not physically, then at least mentally? Is cultural anthropology maybe not dealing with all these problems, because in her heart she is still the science made by people alien to the society they come from?

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One of the most annoying and fastly spreading bad habits of - as far as I can say - angloamerican sciene, is to cite whole books without referring to pages. I think, there are only some cases you can do that: If you talk about this book precisely, or if you talk about a topic or idea, which is strongly connected to that book, e.g. if the idea was mentioned first in this book and is attached in our minds to that book. But to cite a book which is only about the idea you are mentioning, like others too, is pretty useless, I think. Maybe its of help for people looking for literature, but the original idea of a citation, the prove of an argument, is fairly missed.

Furthermore, citing books without pages is only proving that the author didn't read the book.

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The regulary reader of the ethno::log sure can remember, that we had several discussions about a "McDonaldization". This term means the spreading of one culture over the world, especially us-american, and the fear that this development is a threat to local cultures. Today, this phenomenon is usually discussed in regards to globalization theories.

Now I recently discovered an interesting fact: similar ideas have been discussed already in 1953 in sociology, under the term of "mass culture":

"mass culture is a dynamic, revolutionary force, breaking down the old barriers of class, tradition, taste, and dissolving all cultural distinctions. It mixes and scrambles everything together, producing what might be called homogenized culture, .... It thus destroys all values, since value judgements imply discrimination."

Now (don't laugh, its true) this text was written by a man with the name Dwight McDonalds, A theory of Mass Culture, 1953, S. 62, cited from the article "Culture", In: Borgatta: Encyclopedia of Sociology, 1992.

The only difference between both ideas is, that McDonalds feared an impact to the so called "high culture", a term describing the culture of the bourgeoisie, as marxist theorists would say, the humanistic culture, as some others say. Think of classical music, Goethe, greek drama and opera. This idea of culture, or this hierarchical differenciation between culture in a society is not longer of importance in anthropology, or never was of importance. But now the fear of cultural supremacy comes back in the clothes of globalization, instead of mass culture crushing high culture its now about global culture crushing local culture.

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Reading the abstract of David McKnight's "Going the Whiteman's Way: kinship and marriage among Australian Aborigines", I got the impression that kinship rules as a dominat way to organise cultures are going to be outdated. Therefore the anthropology of kinship seemed like an oldfashioned way of studying cultures. But in a recent debate, I came to the conclusion that maybe kinship rules turn out to be inappropriate only in areas of classical anthopological fieldwork (like the study of the Aborigines in Australia) but seem to be very up to date if we turn our focus on new areas of fieldwork such as the political system of the United States: The Kennedys and the Bushs are extremly rich families, who established members of their families in leading positions. That raises the question if kinship is a dominant way of establishing power in a political system like the United States? And more: Is it worth looking at such families and analyze them with the tools of classical kinship anthropology ? Any anthropologists known who have done that ? Going the Whiteman's Way

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Falls jemand interessiert ist: Meine Hauptseminararbeit "Multimedia als Mittel der ethnologischen Darstellung" aus dem Seminar zu "Kultur und Cyberspace" ist nun online. Ich habe versucht aufzuzeigen, was eine textbasierte Multimedia-Technik wie das von mir entwickelte Reader Triggered Multimedia für die wissenschaftliche Darstellung leisten könnte. Die Arbeit skizziert kurz die bisherigen Forderungen der Ethnologie nach Multimedia und Hypertext für die ethnographische Repräsentation. Ich schaue mir dann die bisherigen Lösungen der Darstellungen bei den Massenmedien an und leite dann über auf die Vorteile, die ich bei meiner eigenen Entwicklung sehe. Ein Beispiel für die Technik steht dort zur Verfügung.

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The president of the german farmer association, Gerd Sonnleitner, called the actual brazilian agriculture a "slaveholder agriculture". In context of the plans of the eu commision to cut the subventions on the sugar industry he said: "If this sugestion is put into action, a sustainable and environmentally sound production of sugar [in europe] will be sacrificed to a slaveholder agriculture in brazil", reports Newsclick.

I think, this is really a fleer. Since 40 years the european union protects and subvents its own sugar market, maintaining a price three times higher than on the world market. The overproduction is sold to the world market for dumping prices. This way the poor countries are hitten twice: they can't export their sugar to europe, and by importing the cheap sugar from europe they destroy their own sugar industry. A german weblogger put together very interesting sources and studies to proove this.

And up to this point, we not even have spoken about what continent started slaveholdery in brazil and for who's profit. Sugar and rubber where under the goods, which europeans produced cheap in their oversea colonies, and the working conditions were deathly. Deathly for for the humans, as in case of the sugar industry mostly imported slaves from africa worked so hard they died at young age, and deathly also for the traditional culture, as is prooven in the case of the rubber tappers in peru. At this time the system of haciendas, patrons and exploitation of workers with contractual and tributary system was invented. Now, as this parts of the world aren't under our power anymore and thus a competition for our market, to call them slaveholder agriculture, this is really a big shame and a total neglection of our responsibility for postcolonial problems in former colonies. It's not that we aren't allowed to criticise the brazilian sugar industry, but not with these words and not with the aim to maintain our system which is responsible for other problems in other poor countries.

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Ikea, worlds biggest furniture seller, opend its first shop in Bejing, China, as "Die Zeit" reports (in german). By doing this, the swedish francisor not only exports western furniture-concepts but represents western lifestyle in Asia. The article tells entertaining anecdotes on how the chinese people and IKEA management cope with unforseen cultural challanges. What do you think about commercial spread of cultur? Adoption, integration, assimilation or replacment of the local? My personal feelings range from enthusiasm about the global village to deep concern about the decay of local traditions... what would a ethnologist answer?

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The US government is defending liberal democracy with means which are denying liberal values. The most appalling thing is that the administration justifies that in public. Read this article and editor's comment in the not quite so radical Financial Times.

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The term 'culture' is definitly the most discussed term in anthropology. But the debate is always about the scientific meaning. In german (in english also?) there are also other meanings, which are not part of this debate, except to express, that we don't mean this meaning. The problem is, that if we have to talk about this 'external' meaning, we don't have a term for it. My question: Is there any term for culture as it's meant in daily life, expressing institutionalised culture like classical music, theater etc.? Bettina Beer describes it in the article "Ethnos, Ethnie, Kultur" (1)Beer, Bettina: Ethnos, Ethnie, Kultur. In: Fischer, Hans: Ethnologie. Berlin : Reimer, 2003, S. 60. "Kultur im Sinne von Kultur-behörde und Kultus-ministerium oder im Sinne des Feuilletons als Musik, Theater, Literatur, Architektur und bildende Kunst." A shorter term? My ideas:

• bürgerliche Kulturverständnis
• institutionalisierte Kultur Any other suggestions?

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Vernant, our fellow student currently for a year at the London School of Economics, provided us a thoughtful article about capitalism, and why he believes that we should in future accept it partly, and partly not.

To call for a 21th century to be the era of "pure capitalism" is not only insipid, but also immoral.

Proud capitalists abound at the LSE in these days: What is most obscene about that is that they try to bring two apparently very odd things together: an economic system which subsumes everything beneath its basic imperative of making profit, and morality. Those who are sceptical about capitalism are depicted as dumb defenders of state planning. To the contrary, only capitalism should be properly moral, according to these staunch believers. Because only in a capitalist system the individual is free - free to think, free to do, and free to exploit, one might add. To exploit his peers, the other free individuals, and nature, corresponding to the free decisions he has taken in his mind. What is missing in those not very penetrative accounts is a closer look at what morality means: [...read more]for fatuous defenders of capitalism it is nothing more than individual freedom. But what about the others? Isn?t it the case that morality is really about relationships between people? What are we on if somebody abuses the freedom he enjoys only for his own piggishness? Let?s look what other reasons there might be to claim that capitalism is a moral thing: It is said to be against racism. Because racism doesn?t pay nowadays. If it would pay, capitalists would have no problem being racists whatsoever. Take Henry Ford, a respectable capitalist in my view. He was known for his anti-Semitism. But it didn?t impede him earning a fortune and changing an entire society. In our time, no major capitalist could take publicly a racist position, and continue to amass money. So he will deliberately avoid to discriminate too bluntly - not because of any morals, but because of grabby self-interest. Or take sexism, for that matter: female producers and consumers are rather ok for capitalists. Commodification of the female body too. Far from being moral, capitalism has continuously torn apart and destroyed every moral idea, as soon as it was incommensurate with making money. What strikes me most is that proud capitalists often mention the poor, whose poverty is seemingly caused by their own lack of talents. They depend on the rich, but any kind of redistribution is restoring communist spectres. Which is a contradiction in itself: The poor are reliant on the wealthy, but the fortune of the latter should be protected. Where should then any sources for the poor come from? What else should help except for redistribution? Our capitalists only want to assure that no money is stolen from the wealthy - they are the most productive, after all. The poor can remain in their miserable condition, this shall be the most appropriate incentive for them to struggle for progress. Additionally, when they are continuously watching others consuming champagne, diamonds and supermodels, they should have even more stimulus to become more productive. That conspicuous consumption might play a role in perpetuating outrageous inequalities is not mentioned. Gigantic amounts of money could be used for redistribution, instead of dissipation. Yes, this should appeal to a very basic instinct: envy. But I also bet on something which is lacking in the moral philosophy of pure capitalism: social justice. I would argue, however, that capitalism as an encompassing system has a morality, namely a split one. This morality consists of two opposed ideologies: total self-interest and the total gift. Some are self-interested, rational maximizers of their utility - some even unapologetically so. Others give free and care for their neighbours, moved by compassion. But actually most of us do both, and try to reconcile both. The difference is that "pure" capitalists submit totally to their self-interest, and give charities only when it fancies them. Whereas others would find it more reasonable to have redistribution institutionalized. Up to the present capitalists have been presented frequently as greedy and avaricious. And rightly so. A world reigned by pure capitalism is a quite gloomy and morbid illusion. In the absense of state interventions, the capitalist market becomes a "Satanic Mill," in Karl Polanyi?s words, that erodes the social foundations of its own existence. Neither can one deny the efficiency of markets in certain respects. But none of the extremes is good. The middle way would be the better: to use capitalism and its effectiveness, and combine it with ethical commitment and thus, redistribution.

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NASA-funded researchers have discovered the most distant object orbiting Earth's sun and named it after Sedna, Inuit Goddess of the Ocean. The object is a mysterious planet-like body three times farther from Earth than Pluto, reports Nasa. In fact, its really cold there (-240 Celsius). If its really a planet, what is already discussed, then it is a fair move from the scientists to use a god name from outside european mythology. In german, read also Spiegel. Via ITW

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Today the Süddeutsche Zeitung published a very interesting article on a renewed debate on evolution theory in the public opinion. Apperently thoughts contra the academic investigationary theories of evolution in geology, biology, history and human studies are increasing as far as that science already has problems sometimes to rectify its work. Additional, this to the actual debate, some US-states are planning to equal education about 'Intelligent Design' in public schools... In other words, that opposing theories on evolution, such as ID and religious creation, should have the same value in education.

Interesting as well because the topic might be of interest in the upcoming presidential campaign in the USA.

I also add the link to Intelligent Design network, inc. - Seeking Objectivity in Origins Science - for further information!

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