Margaret Mead Reads My Tea Leaves

"participant observation, so central to the discipline of anthropology, so revered and fetishized,..."

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:00:48 +1200

“participant observation, so central to the discipline of anthropology, so revered and fetishized, included in each and every grant proposal under “method”, is in fact never taught but left intangible and auratic, as if it is a secret only to be revealed to the initiated, by which time it is unnecessary and the initiated have in turn become guardians of the secret.”

- Michael Taussig (2009:128), What Color is the Sacred?

"for many people the struggle to be alive is the same as the struggle against the constant corrosion..."

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 22:29:12 +1200

“for many people the struggle to be alive is the same as the struggle against the constant corrosion of the present, both by change and by uncertainty”

- Achille Mbembe

"Malinowski wrote a note to himself at the back of his diary: “Main thing to do, is reflect on..."

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 14:10:47 +1200

“Malinowski wrote a note to himself at the back of his diary: “Main thing to do, is reflect on the two branches: my ethnological work & my diary & take the clue from both. They are well-nigh complementary as complementary as can be.””

- Michael Taussig (2009:113), What Color is the Sacred?

"To propose that something like pagan magic was alive and well in the secular world around us and..."

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 11:27:52 +1200

“To propose that something like pagan magic was alive and well in the secular world around us and that this was not despite modernity but because of it - this was no less appropriately inappropriate than Leiris’s question as to the color of the sacred. As a question that tore at its own moorings, as a question that begged the question, it was no less bewildering than it was mocking, light hearted, and unsettling”

- Michael Taussig (2009:34), What Color is the Sacred?

Photo

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 16:24:15 +1200

"Marlowe’s ‘Tragical History of Doctor Faustus’ concerns a German scholar who sells..."

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:30:38 +1200

“Marlowe’s ‘Tragical History of Doctor Faustus’ concerns a German scholar who sells his soul to the devil so as to unlock the secrets of nature and conquer the world, very much including the fabled Orient from where the richest colored fabrics and dyes came. ‘Faustus’ can be read today as an old-fashioned morality play, and no doubt even in Marlowe’s time it was a delight for its exaggeration. But the images and the language endure. The devil may have been banished to the world of fable and children’s literature, but the poetic truth of selling one’s soul to the devil is probably more relevant today than it was in 1600, for now it is an everyday occurrence and technology can be truly apocalyptic. Who needs the devil when you have MBAs and AK-47s, his favorite calling cards?”

- Michael Taussig (2009:227), What Color is the Sacred?

"the profession of the drysalter in eighteenth-century Britain [was] A “vital adjunct of the..."

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:26:55 +1200

“the profession of the drysalter in eighteenth-century Britain [was] A “vital adjunct of the textile industry”, such a man dealt chiefly in dyes but also in drugs. Many dyes had medical uses and, in addition to those, the drysalter traded in pure medicines as well, such as licorice juice, talap, and quina-quina. Drysalters in fact called their wares “drugs”, sometimes specifying “dye-drugs”.”

- Michael Taussig (2009:146), What Color is the Sacred?

Michael Taussig (2009), What Color is the Sacred?

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:12:50 +1200

Michael Taussig (2009), What Color is the Sacred?

More Knutsford

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:58:59 +1200

More Knutsford

Knutsford’s Great Race

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:34:31 +1200

Knutsford’s Great Race

fuckyeahghosttowns: Abandoned houses in Liverpool,...

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:27:30 +1200

fuckyeahghosttowns:

Abandoned houses in Liverpool, England.
(photo + submission by practisemakespervert)

As part of the City Council’s planned regeneration of the areas surrounding the city centre, hundreds of people were relocated in order to prepare these streets for demolition. However, many of these houses have been empty for over five years, with no signs of this changing any time soon. Some of the boarded up houses as you come in to the city, have had the boards over the windows decorated, but most off of the main drag have been left untouched.

Glory Days - Anthropologists as Journalists

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:46:05 +1200

Glory Days - Anthropologists as Journalists:

from Neuroanthropology

guilbep: This is your God “They live” // John Carpenter

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:47:35 +1200

guilbep:

This is your God
“They live” // John Carpenter

Photo

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:02:19 +1200

putonyourmask: Gas Defence (by The National Archives UK)

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:00:11 +1200

putonyourmask:

Gas Defence (by The National Archives UK)

Photo

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:27:56 +1200

ninacountsbluecars

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:26:55 +1200

ninacountsbluecars

NYRblog on the Warburg Library

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:20:58 +1200

NYRblog on the Warburg Library:

“If the university’s plans succeed, the institute will now have to abandon Warburg’s fundamental principles, lose control of its own books and periodicals (many of them acquired by gift or by the expenditure of the institute’s endowments), and shed, over time, the distinguished staff of scholars and scholar-librarians who train its students and continue to shape its holdings. The Warburg’s collections will become a component of the troubled library system of the University of London—a system that has already shown its willingness to sell off thousands of valuable books, and could do the same with part of the Warburg’s holdings, should it continue, as is likely, to find itself in financial straits. A center of European culture and a repository of the Western tradition that escaped Hitler and survived the Blitz may finally be destroyed by British bean-counters.”

"The individual is not to be conceived as a sort of elementary nucleus, a primitive atom, a multiple..."

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 04:25:45 +1200

“The individual is not to be conceived as a sort of elementary nucleus, a primitive atom, a multiple and inert material on which power comes to fasten or against which it happens to strike… In fact, it is already one of the prime effects of power that certain bodies, certain gestures, certain discourses, certain desires, come to be identified and constituted as individuals. The individual, that is, is not the vis-à-vis of power; it is … one of its prime effects.”

- Michel Foucault, ‘Body/Power’ and ‘Truth and Power’ in C. Gordon (ed.) Michel Foucault: Power/Knowledge, U.K.: Harvester, 1980. (via thekydb)

"Anthropology never has had a distinct subject matter, and because it doesn’t have a real method,..."

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:37:30 +1200

“Anthropology never has had a distinct subject matter, and because it doesn’t have a real method, there’s a great deal of anxiety over what it is.”

- Clifford Geertz (via gwanthsociety)