Anthropological stories and insights from vrije universiteit amsterdam
door Menno van den Bos
Cultureel antropologen zijn wereldverbeteraars die je niet zult aantreffen in het bedrijfsleven. Zo, dat cliché is eruit. En nu over naar de realiteit: dat antropologen daar steeds gewilder worden. “Waar vraagstukken complex worden, hebben bedrijven óns nodig.”
Leave a CommentTRIGGER WARNING: This article, or pages it links to, contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors.
Girl I want to make you sweat
Sweat till you can’t sweat no more
And if you cry
I’m gonna push it, push it, push it some more
Alalalalalong
Bob Marley, Looking In Your Big Brown Eyes
Today a friend of mine sent me a Facebook link with an audio fragment of radio 538, a popular Dutch radio channel (2018, test je vriend, Radio 538). The reactions below were filled with hysterical exhilaration – emoticons that tear up from laughter, variously extended versions of “haha”, and tagged names with requests to “please, take the time to listen to this”.
The fragment was of the show called “Test your friend”, in which people call their friends live on the radio with a made up story to see how their friends react. One of the two male presenters shortly explains today’s prank. Yvette, a woman of 25, will call her best friend Larissa to ask her if she could make use of her apartment to carry out her hypothetical adulterous plans.
Larissa’s phone rings…
Leave a Commentdoor Irene Stengs
Als antropologisch onderzoeker van ‘cultuur in Nederland’ doe ik in feite al mijn onderzoek ‘om de hoek’, en dit is helemaal het geval bij onderzoek in Amsterdam, mijn woonplaats. Zo ondernam ik laatst na jaren weer eens een bescheiden veldwerkexpeditie naar de Huishoudbeurs, een fenomeen dat aansluit bij mijn bredere interesse in braderieën. Iedereen weet natuurlijk wat een braderie is, maar er zijn denk ik maar weinigen die zich realiseren hoezeer Nederland een land van braderieën is. In provincies als Drenthe, Gelderland, Zeeland en Overijssel – daar waar veel Nederlanders op vakantie gaan – worden elk jaar in de zomermaanden honderden braderieën georganiseerd. Los daarvan zijn er nog vele andere events met een ‘jaarmarkt’ of een zomermarkt, wat in feite andere woorden voor braderie zijn.
3 CommentsThis year’s Master thesis prize of the Faculty of Social Sciences, VU Amsterdam was won by anthropology graduate Jochem Kootstra. Kootstra wrote a thought-provoking and engaged work about aesthetic and engineering ways to deal with technology. Below you will find a synopsis of his research.
Leave a Commentby Ton Salman
I’ve just finished reading “The Golden House” by Salman Rushdie. I enjoyed it: it is amusing, irritating, timely, biting and a delight to read. Of course, I am biased; he has been one of my favorite novelists for years. And he is one of the authors that in audacious ways often addresses the clashes between cultures, religions, ideologies that characterize our current globalizing, fidgety and agitated world, in provocative, foolhardy and sometimes pestering bravado. His novels, in my view, are must-reads for anthropologists.
In “The Golden House” he demonstrates his skill again. The novel plays in the USA, during the Obama-years and the first shrieking of his successor. Rushdie expresses in unequivocal terms what he thinks about the incredible events, without the message getting the upper hand. But he also comes to speak about other current developments, in the realms of cultural encounters, clashes and allergies. First, by mocking a tendency, for instance at USA-universities to be hypersensitive about concepts and labels for human “categories”, and second about (public) lectures on, again, university campuses by lecturers or on subjects that might make specific student groups feel “uncomfortable” or “un-safe”. Although universities are the loci here, the topics are larger, and trigger critical thinking about how, as societies and also within our ranks of anthropologists, we could address such controversies.
5 CommentsIntroduction by Maaike Matelski In June 2015 the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology organized a seminar on account of the increasing number of Rohingya refugees in South East Asia. Since 2016 and in particular since…
Leave a CommentBy Matthias Teeuwen – Some time ago I wrote a blog about the possibilities emerging technologies offer to the practice of qualitative research. Back then, I wrote that ‘it seems that emerging technologies constitute a…
Leave a CommentBy Liza Koch
This photo essay is about the process of making Nsima flour, the most important food people eat every day in Malawi.
by Maaike van Nus
