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AnthroCurrents March 15, 2017

Linguistic anthropologist Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein refutes the demonization of “filler words” such as “like” or “um”.  She outlines how these discourse markers matter for social interaction and that attempts to banish such words are really a bias against women and younger generations who are assumed to use them more frequenlty. Anthropology professor turned politician? While an…

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AnthroCurrents March 1, 2017

Dr. Paul Stoller is asking American society to think about creating a more inclusive set of cultural values that accounts for our diverse and even still rapidly diversifying society. Gotta find them all?  Anthropologists have partnered with a computer scientist to design a facial recognition system for… LEMURS! Sociologist Sarah Thorton uses ethnography to document…

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AnthroCurrents February 15, 2017

Will you be participating in anthropology day tomorrow?  I look forward to the surge of stories about anthropology and anthropologists in the news.  If you’re a practitioner and you’re publishing something—please send us a note, we’d love to feature you! Who’s asking whom to be their valentine? Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher of match.com reports that…

AnthroCurrents Blog Returns

The NAPA Communications Committee is happy to announce that the AnthroCurrents blog, started by Cathy White and most recently authored energetically by Walter Pond, is set to relaunch under the stewardship of Julia Wignall. Julia currently works as an anthropologist performing data analysis, ethnography and research at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She finished her Master’s in…

AnthroCurrents–On Hiatus

Greetings, Practicing Anthropologists! It has been a quick 8 months, or so, since I started posting the AnthroCurrents blog twice each month.  I have enjoyed the process, the sharing, and your comments.  However, it is time for me to move on to other endeavors, ones that do not leave time for this activity at the…

AnthroCurrents–December 13, 2016

Normalizing “ethnography” as a business tool See passing mentions of ethnography as a business tool in The Memphis Daily News, American Society of Mechanical Engineers Proceedings (2016), Crain’s Detroit Business, and a comparison of journalism and “anthropology” from The Nieman Lab. AI, Technology, and Humans Forbes summarizes Rebecca Gibson’s (American U.) recent article in Sexuality…

AnthroCurrents–November 29, 2016

Practicing Anthropology The Wall Street Journal gives passing mention to ethnography as a marketing research tool, in an article about how election polling that missed Middle America’s votes for Trump may indicate similar advertising research has similar limitations. Seeking Alpha goes further, proclaiming that “[e]thnography is probably the only way to gather accurate data” for…