DeepThought

Guest Blogging at anthropologi.info

Join me over the next few weeks as a guest blogger at anthropologi.info as I chart the changes in perspectives that have informed both my own work and anthropology as a discipline, and discuss the challenges currently facing anthropologists in cyberspace. The Internet has not changed anything. Instead we use the Internet to change the ways we do things. See my first post The Birth of a Cyberethnographer: The MU5 is to Blame

posted by Denise Carter @ 9:09 AM 2 comments links to this post   

Linguistics, Culture and Subordinate Clauses

An interesting story by Rafaela von Bredow at Living without Numbers or Time about a remote tribe whose language is totally unique:

"The Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses. That makes their language one of the strangest in the world -- and also one of the most hotly debated by linguists.

Since 1977, Daniel Everett the British ethnologist at the University of Manchester has spent a total of seven years living with the Pirahãs. The small hunting and gathering tribe, with a population of only 310 to 350, has become the centre of a raging debate between linguists, anthropologists and cognitive researchers. Even Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Steven Pinker of Harvard University, two of the most influential theorists on the subject, are still arguing over what it means for the study of human language that the Pirahãs don't use subordinate clauses. Some of the peculiarities of the language are:

The Pirahã only use three pronouns.

They hardly use any words associated with time

Past tense verb conjugations don't exist.

There are no words for colours

The Pirahã do not use subordinate clauses.

The Pirahã appear to have no need for numbers.

The Pirahã do not have a creation myth explaining existence.

No-one paints or tells stories

"Eventually Everett came up with a surprising explanation for the peculiarities of the PirahÃ’s idiom. "The language is created by the culture," says the linguist. He explains the core of PirahÃ’s culture with a simple formula: "Live here and now." The only thing of importance that is worth communicating to others is what is being experienced at that very moment. "All experience is anchored in the presence," says Everett, who believes this carpe-diem culture doesn't allow for abstract thought or complicated connections to the past – limiting the language accordingly.

It is very difficult to conceive of a world without numbers, without stories or even without art. But try to conceive of how full the present must be to leave no room for anything else in our lives.

posted by Denise Carter @ 6:53 AM 0 comments links to this post   

A New Job

I will soon be joining the Cyberspace Research Unit at the Department of Forensic and Investigative Science, UCLAN.

The Cyberspace Research Unit's missions are to:

empower children and young people with the tools, knowledge and skills they need to navigate safely in cyberspace

explore how criminals use the Internet and to examine the implications for investigative strategies.

See the InternetSafetyZone for an example of the work they do.

I am really looking forward to the challenge and to working with the team already there.

…coming…ready or not!!

posted by Denise Carter @ 11:42 AM 0 comments links to this post   

Anthropology, Gardening, Balance and Life

The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before.
Vita Sackville-West, 1892 - 1962

Well the blog has been neglected for a few days. The weather is glorious and I have been in my garden with my hands deep in the rich soil – weeding, sowing, planting – no telephone, computer or internet (and I’ve left the marking for a rainy day!). This is how I retain my sanity – among the tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes and peppers. My greenhouse was a birthday present a few years ago from beloved – last summer was ‘writing up’ summer and my planting was minimal – but this year I am on a mission. My Dad (74 this year) and I eagerly contest the first tomato, the first cougette, the longest cucumber, anything. So far I’m winning with a Hosta already in flower. He can never grow marrows from seed either!

The birds nesting under the eaves have returned to raise their chicks for the fourth year running, very industrious they are too. Their arrival at the nest with food is heralded by the chicks cheeping loudly. Every year I know they are growing because the sound gets louder and louder until suddenly one day they are gone, flown the nest. One of my ambitions is to catch them leaving.

The weather forecast gives rain over the weekend so I will be back at my computer, working on my ESRC grant application and marking, but until then…I have my garden.

posted by Denise Carter @ 6:28 PM 0 comments links to this post   

Blogging and the Academy

A conference was held at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society (sponsored by Microsoft!). Twelve papers are available for download and a webcast of the event is also available.

“Web logs ("blogs") are transforming much of American society, including government, politics, journalism, and business. In the past few years, blogs have begun to affect the delivery of legal education, the production and dissemination of legal scholarship, and the practice of law. We are delighted that over twenty of the nation’s leading law professor bloggers have agreed to join with us for the first scholarly conference on the impact of blogs on the legal academy.”

Papers discuss what is meant by ‘legal scholarship’and the value/use of blogs as an arena for ‘an informal and yet sophisticated discussion’ and ‘how blogging can advance our scholarship?’

I haven’t yet downloaded and read all of the papers but they certainly add to the debate around blogging. There was also a blog workshop at the WWW2006 conference with all papers online at Weblogging Ecosystem

These are mainly quantitative approaches to blog analysis but there are some interesting ones - Iranian and Chinese bloggers are both covered, and some papers show clear trends, for example about the relationship between social ties and continued blogging. In addition to a regular track of research presentations, this year's workshop also featured the first ever weblog research data release. This data release gave researchers access to 10 million weblog posts from July 2005. Many of the workshop papers used this data set in the presentation of their research results at the workshop. The plan is to compile the papers that focus on this data set into a book which will present an ‘exciting view of a specific period of blogosphere history’.

[The data release comprises a complete set of weblog posts for three weeks in July 2005 (on the order of 10M posts from 1M weblogs). This data set has been selected as it spans a period of time during which an event of global significance occurred, namely the London bombings.]

posted by Denise Carter @ 3:04 AM 0 comments links to this post