DOOR TON SALMAN De mensen in het land demonstreren, vloeken, vechten, tieren en vieren. President Morales, reeds veertien jaar aan de macht, trad gisteren, zondag 10 november 2019, af – drie weken na een omstreden…
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By Matthias Teeuwen Standing at the end of my Master’s, the topic of this year’s anthropology day particularly spoke to me: Futures. What can I expect of the future as a newly trained anthropologist? What…
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door Ton Salman 3 personages: antropoloog 1 (Lily), antropoloog 2 (Anabel), rechter (Veronica). Onlangs deed de hoogste Nederlandse bestuursrechter, de Raad van State, uitspraak in een hoog opgelopen zaak: hebben aanhangers van de Kerk van…
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Door Ton Salman. Helder, goed onderbouwd, juiste bronvermelding, logisch opgebouwd, strak betoogd – we benadrukken het steeds: zó moet je schrijven. En dat geldt des te meer voor sociale wetenschappers en zéker antropologen. Van argumentatie,…
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by 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.
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By Dominique van de Kamp During the pre-master of Social and Cultural Anthropology, we followed a course called “Core themes of Anthropology,” by Ton Salman. In our first class, he mentioned that every anthropologist would like to be a fly on the wall, almost invisible – however impossible *. From that moment on, we started calling ourselves the “Flies on the wall.”
Two years later, we handed in our theses and a great part of us went to celebrate together in Rome. There I wrote something about the flies on the wall, which turned out to be my notes of an engaged anthropologist:
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Everyone has a story to tell. For anthropologists, such accounts can reveal as much about the people and societies we study as more conventional research. But the process of collecting stories in the field and retelling them in the academic arena is littered with pitfalls. How do we ensure that our subjects are fairly represented? How do we construct a culturally sensitive narrative whilst maintaining scientific validity? This summer school introduces you to the hands-on approach we call DAY: do anthropology yourself. It is a great opportunity to gain experience in fieldwork and ethnography and to improve your skills in interviewing and storytelling.
By Matthias Teeuwen I want to thank Ton Salman for his insightful take on the question whether anthropology is the most scientific of the humanities or the most humanistic of the sciences or both, it gave me food for thought. For one: how is it that anthropology is considered science? It seems that Ton sees the scientific aspect of anthropology in its critical function of looking past the representations and meanings of people and examining the empirical conditions in which they arose.
I very much agree with Ton on this point. But I think that this hybridity is easily misunderstood in the sense that the critical, scientific side of anthropology is emphasised at the neglect of the hermeneutical, humanistic side.
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By Ton Salman In the following blog, Ton Salman reacts to Matthias Teeuwen’s contribution to Standplaats Wereld of 13-2-2017, titled “Is Anthropology the most Humanistic of the Social Sciences and the most Scientific of the Humanities?”
First of all, allow me to thank Matthias Teeuwen for, once again, an intriguing and pertinent contribution to the ongoing dialogue on the nature of anthropology and its potential contribution to contemporary societal issues and challenges. The question is not a new one – but it is correct to make it a persistent one in anthropological reflection, because the –always provisional– answers have real consequences for what sort of endeavor anthropology in the end might be and what its ambitions may entail. A frequently heard characterization of anthropology is that it is something “between the sciences and the humanities”, or “the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities”. The phrase is indeed often attributed to Kroeber, but sometimes also to Eric Wolf or Edward Sapir. But let that be the least of our worries. The substance of the matter is of course about the métier’s epistemology, methods and relation to other disciplines and professions like philosophy and text exegesis, but also sociology, political sciences and other social sciences.
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Door Caroline van Slobbe Havana is full of small businesses. The most common entrepreneurs are ladies who sell cupcakes and cookies from their front door or window, small cafeterias with coffee and a sandwich for some pesos, people selling the latest American movies and series on copied DVDs, and men walking with carts and shouting in a special loud and low tone that many of them use: “Tengo galletas de mantequillaaaaaaaaaa” (I have butter cookies). When there are eggs and/or potatoes – products that are scarce – that is shouted loudly: “Hay papa, hay huevo, hay papa, hay huevo” (there are potatoes, there are eggs). It is almost like a song, or maybe a rap. Together with the roaring engines of vintage cars, and an occasional rumba or reggaeton beat, it forms a cacophony that is typical for the neighborhood.
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