Time-Life has teamed up with Google to archive their images online. Browsing around I found this gem, a picture of “Anthropologist Franz Boas” from the cover of Time in 1936 (When he was 78). The caption reads: “He translated the world’s gestures.” UPDATE: Link to article text. (Thanks to raggedrobin!) Here’s a snippet (emphasis added): Franz [...]

As we all know by now, Studs Terkel passed away a few weeks ago. Terkel is remembered for many things—an entertainer, a historian, an intellectual, someone whose history is intimately tied to the city of Chicago. Although few people discussed Terkel as an anthropologist it is clear that his work and vision of the world [...]

Graduate Student Detained in Iran: Esha Momeni, a graduate student in media and journalism and media studies at California State University-Northridge, was released on US$200,000 bail after being arrested and detained by the Iranian police after a minor traffic stop. The AAA Committee for Human Rights signed onto a letter for her release. [...]

Lets face it, a huge conference like the AAA can be overwhelming. Its pretty hard to attend a panel for a single paper, and I find I can’t really stomach more than one or two panels a day. Not to mention socializing, business meetings, looking at the books, and maybe getting out to see a [...]

The truth of the matter is that the principle underlying a classification can never be postulated in advance. It can only be discovered a posteriori by ethnographic investigation, that is, by experience. The Savage Mind 58 Moreover, the “ethnographer cannot interpret myths and rites correctly, even if the interpretation is a structural one … without an exact [...]

Browsing through BoingBoing today I noticed a reference to the Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle. Looking around I discovered that the entire contents of the journal l’Anthropologie Criminelle from 1886 to 1914 have been scanned and made available online. Here is a direct link to the archives. My French isn’t very good, but I have an [...]

In order to understand what myth really is, must we choose between platitude and sophism?  Some claim that human societies merely express, through their mythology, fundamental feelings common to the whole of mankind, such as love, hate, or revenge or that they try to provide some kind of explanations for phenomena which they cannot otherwise [...]

With less than a week to go until the start of the AAA, and no time to properly pull this off, I hereby announce that we will be annoucing the winners of the 1st annual Savage Minds Awarding of teh Excellents Contest on Saturday evening at 6pm in the lobby of the Hilton. ( We’ll [...]

In Culture in Practice, Marshall Sahlins proves himself to be one of the most profound and original anthropologists of our time. In the breadth of [...]

What disappears with the death of a personality is a synthesis of ideas and modes of behaviour as exclusive and irreplaceable as the one a floral species develops out of simple chemical substances common to all species. When the loss of someone dear to us…moves us, we suffer much the same sense of irreparable [...]

The other day I went to the store to buy some deodorant and a new toothbrush. I do not buy these sorts of things often because 1) tooth brushes do not wear out that often and 2) like many people in Hawai’i I but things like deodorant, razors, rice, toilet paper etc. in bulk because [...]

Minerva Discussion Site: Social Science Research Council has just launched a new, really great site dedicated to discussing Minerva. The site has about twelve essays up, among them Catherine Lutz and Hugh Gusterson, with more promised by Michael Hardt, Joseph Masco and many others. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a place [...]

I do not postulate a kind of pre-existent harmony between the different levels of structure. They may be – and often are – completely contradictory, but the modes of contradiction all belong the same type. Indeed, according to dialectic materialism it should always be possible to proceed, by transformation, from economic or social [...]

“Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères Aiment également, dans leur mûre saison, Les chats puissants et doux, orgueil de la maison, Qui comme eux sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires. Amis de la science et de la volupté Ils cherchent le silence et l’horreur des ténèbres; L’Erèbe les eût pris pour ses coursiers funèbres, S’ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté. Ils [...]

On the flight to Nairobi, already Obama buttons and shirts were everywhere.  My taxi driver James tells me that today has been declared an impromptu public holiday:  civil servants and others will have the day off.  Later I learn that the abruptness of this irks some of these servants in Nairobi, because it doesn’t allow [...]

The greater our knowledge, the more obscure the overall scheme. The dimensions multiply, and the growth of axes of reference beyond a certain point paralyzes intuitive methods: it becomes impossible to visualize a system when its representation requires a continuum of more than three or four dimensions. But the day may come when all [...]

Here on Savage Minds we are gearing up for Levi-Strauss’s birthday. Strong has been posting LS quotes for the past few days, and we are hoping to get some high-octane people to talk about the event. All of this preparation, however, has really gotten me thinking about what it would mean to celebrate the Levi-Strauss [...]

I hate traveling and explorers . . . The fact that so much effort and expenditure has to be wasted on reaching the object of our studies bestows no value on that aspect of our profession, and should be seen rather as its negative side.  The truths which we seek so far afield only become [...]

May an inconstant disciple dedicate this book which appears in 1958, the year of Émile Durkheim’s centenary, to the memory of the founder of Année Sociologique:  that famed workshop where modern anthropology fashioned part of its tools and which we have abandoned, not so much out of disloyalty as out of the sad conviction that [...]

Julian Steward, rexamined: John Hawkes is writing a series explaining culture diffusionism, which is quite useful for those of us who haven’t received an education in the Boasians. Hawkes started with the Prussian himself (and associates), and his next installment focuses on a 1929 article by Julian Sterward, “Diffusion and independent invention: a critique [...]