"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong" (Richard Feynman)

Monday, November 30, 2009

OLPC Donate one laptop per Baruch Class



SEND THIS LINK TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY: http://www.firstgiving.com/barucholpc

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Creating our Marketing Campaign for One Laptop Per Class Campaign



We need to make at least 200 paper airplanes to release into atrium on Thu Dec 10th during club hours. Please use the Nick's Plane design in the video or your best version otherwise.

For more on the design visit: http://www.paperairplanes.co.uk/nickplan.php
This paper airplane is a superb glider it is very well balanced indeed even when made by the most inexperienced child. It can be quickly made from a sheet of A4 paper and I really like it. I drew this page up and placed it on the internet within a day of learning to make this paper airplane.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Jane Elliot's A Class Divided (Frontline Doc)

Originally posted 10/5/07 12:17 PM

FRONTLINE: A Class Divided - 1 of 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCjDxAwfXV0


If you missed class or want to see the video we watched in class, here it is. I posed that WORDS create WORLDS and that Jane Elliot's experiment with her third grade class shown in this documentary gives you a etic view of how this works around discrimination.

You should watch parts 1 and 2 on YouTube.

What were your thoughts?

PS Also here is the link to the Opinion in The Ticker on "Exclusive Diversity" at Baruch College published 9/24/07 by several editors on staff.

Race & Racism in Brazil

Originally posted 5/19/09 4:37 PM
After we read Jeffrey Fish's essay on race in Brazil titled MIXED BLOOD in the Conformity & Conflict textbook (McCurdy & Spradley), you could be left thinking racism doesn't exist in Brazil. This video paints another picture.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The Leech and the Earthworm

Originally posted 11/20/07
Marc Silver directed a documentary about indigneous people's views on genetic engineering. This is the title sequence based on a folktale. What do you think about the emic vs. etic view of such a tale? What assumptions come up for the outsider who is white, from a colonial nation, from the US, or for the native Australian seeing this tale in a film for the first time?

Check out Marc's cool website.
http://www.marcsilver.net/#

HOMEWORK: THU NOV 3 HOW CORPORATIONS BECAME LEGAL PERSONS

Originally posted 5/13/09
The last few weeks I have been emphasizing how individuals are shaped by culturally-defined contexts of race, ethnicity, nation, sex, gender, class, achieved vs. ascribed status, and much more. Ethnography gains insight into the cultural mindset through the ways individuals understand how their culture and/or the world works. This presumes a mindset that seems like it is reality but it is the glasses we were conditioned to see with.

In your introduction to anthropology (ANT1001) we examined how we evolved as a human species from the band, the tribe, the chief and the state out of which grew state economies and capitalism. Westernization, colonialism, and cultural imperialism was an outcome that could not be consistent with the values of the generalized reciprocity of the band. Or so we've been taught. Enculturation and acculturation is everywhere but it is not the end of possibilities in our choices as individuals or groups. But we'd have to be responsible for HOW we learned what we know and WHAT that learning has been for. Ethnography is the tool to excating that learning process and knowing way of being.

I didn't get to a set of short video clips from the award-winning Canadian documentary THE CORPORATION (watch the whole documentary here). Now that you have begun to see the power of ethnography as a tool for understanding cultural mindsets, probably one of our best tools students of culture and humankind has, this documentary takes the conversation to a level not often thought of.

How corporate culture has usurped the status of the individual and the effects that is having on our existence as part of a global human culture.

YOUR RESPONSE: Check out these segments and I'd love to hear how you think this connects to the evolution of the study of man -- anthropology.

YOUR HOMEWORK rather than reading an essay is to watch the documentary THE CORPORATION (3 hrs) on google videos



Come back to class Thu, prepared to share at least one thing that really stood out in this documentary about how the corporation has become a person in our culture.