Katie Hillier

"What the ethnographer is in fact faced with—except when (as, of course, he must do) he is pursuing the more automatized routines of data collection—is a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit, and which he must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render. And this is true at the most down-to-earth, jungle field work levels of his activity; interviewing informants, observing rituals, eliciting kin terms, tracing property lines, censusing households … writing his journal. Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of “construct a reading of”) a manuscript—foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but written not in conventionalized graphs of sound but in transient examples of shaped behavior."

From The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz (1973). (via literary-ethnography)

— 1 month ago with 20 notes

Mind Games: Sometimes a White Coat Isn’t Just a White Coat →

What we wear can affect not only what people think of us, but also the way our brains work, a study involving a doctor’s coat shows.

— 1 month ago

Just launched our new digital research division: SmartCommunities. It’s been a long time coming.

— 2 months ago with 2 notes

"To look at the symbolic dimensions of social action - art, religion, ideology, science, law, morality, common sense - is not to turn away from the existential dilemmas of life for some empyrean realm of de-emotionalized forms; it is to plunge into the midst of them. The essential vocation of interpretive anthropology is not to answer our deepest questions, but to make available to use answers that others, guarding other sheep in other valleys, have given, and thus to include them in the consultable record of what man has said."

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (via gambleitaway)

(via fyeahanthropology)

— 2 months ago with 18 notes

10 Great Reads About the Senses →

poptech:

A Tetw reading list

The Blind Man Who Learned To See by Michael Finkel - A fascinating profile of a man who is helping other blind people to see using echolocation.

Mixed Feelings by Sunny Bains - How researchers can tap the plasticity of the brain to hack our 5 senses, and build new ones.

Sense and Sensitivity by Andrea Bartz - Is it possible that some people are wired to take in more sensory information than others, and that are our attitudes towards sensitivity are misguided?

Double Vision by Lawrence Weschler - A classic article about a pair of twins whose art unlocks the secrets of perception.

The Sniff of Legend by Karen Wright - “Human pheromones? Chemical sex attractants? And a sixth sense organ in the nose? What are we, animals?”

The Taste Makers by Raffi Khatchadourian - This trip to the heart of the flavour industry is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how modern food gets its taste.

You’ve Got Smell by Charles Platt - DigiScent is here. Will it take off, and if it does, will it be a fad or a technological revolution?

Seeing by Annie Dillard - An excellent essayist takes a personal, often abstract look inside the world of vision.

Master of Illusion by Ed Yong - How a neuroscientist from Stockholm can use mannequins, rubber arms and virtual reality to transport you outside your own body.

The Smelliest Block in New York by Molly Young - Deep in the Lower East Side, a terrible odor lurks. Where is it coming from?

(via tetw)

This is great. Want more? Go the audio/visual route.