Livejournal Human Anthropology (original) (raw)

Anthropology is...

Hi guys, I was just wondering whether anyone has any favourite quotes on anthropology. It's a hard to define subject and when you're looking for a snappy answer at a party when the person you're talking to is only being polite by asking "so what do you do?" you don't want to oversimplify it, yet you don't want to bore them! After all, it is the most interesting subject imo :D!!

As well as your own answer, do you have any favourite quotes on/about anthropology from any books etc.?
Maybe introduce us to some new must reads!

New article about "hobbits"

cracks: no promises

diana_hawthorne

May 6th, 2009

Long Feet Offer Clues to Mystery of Small Hominid
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: May 7, 2009
An analysis is seen to bolster the view that the “hobbits” formed a population distinct from modern humans.

The extinct hominids commonly known as hobbits may have been small of body and brain, but their feet were exceptionally long, and they were flat.

Find the article here at the New York Times website.

an amazing book i need to recommend - Ace of Spades by David Matthews

kills

movehalfaninch

April 12th, 2009

this is my first posting. hello! my name is sarah, and i'm half black half jewish. my mother is jewish.

A friend of mine recommended a book called 'Ace of Spades' by David Matthews (you can find it here: http://tr.im/iGsu), and I love it so much. I'm half way through it and I can't believe how great this book is. It's so funny and personable. There are moments where I have to put the book down and just burst out laughing. But wow, is it well written! David Matthews is poetic with his words. Truly astounding.

Here's a brief description from The New Yorker:

The son of a Zionist white mother and a Malcolm X-admiring black father, Matthews, in this memoir, is a boy without a race in a city, Baltimore, that requires him to choose one. The story of racial pinball is not entirely unfamiliar: the black kids reject him as too light-skinned, the whites as too broad-nosed. But Matthews displays improvisational verve—blacks are "burnished" and "browned butter," and whites are anything from "alabaster" to "a puffy marshmallow in Baltimore’s steaming cup of cocoa"—and narrates with the vigor of a movie script. Indeed, it is on television that, as a child, he finds the clarity he yearns for. "I was a living contradiction of elements that shouldn’t have been," he writes at one point, whereas on TV "everything was black, or white, and a lot like life."

Really, i can't recommend this book more! I love it! Have you read it?

here's the author, david matthews:

an amazing book i need to recommend - Ace of Spades by David Matthews

kills

movehalfaninch

April 12th, 2009

this is my first posting. hello! my name is sarah, and i'm half black half jewish. my mother is jewish.

A friend of mine recommended a book called 'Ace of Spades' by David Matthews (you can find it here: http://tr.im/iGsu), and I love it so much. I'm half way through it and I can't believe how great this book is. It's so funny and personable. There are moments where I have to put the book down and just burst out laughing. But wow, is it well written! David Matthews is poetic with his words. Truly astounding.

Here's a brief description from The New Yorker:

The son of a Zionist white mother and a Malcolm X-admiring black father, Matthews, in this memoir, is a boy without a race in a city, Baltimore, that requires him to choose one. The story of racial pinball is not entirely unfamiliar: the black kids reject him as too light-skinned, the whites as too broad-nosed. But Matthews displays improvisational verve—blacks are "burnished" and "browned butter," and whites are anything from "alabaster" to "a puffy marshmallow in Baltimore’s steaming cup of cocoa"—and narrates with the vigor of a movie script. Indeed, it is on television that, as a child, he finds the clarity he yearns for. "I was a living contradiction of elements that shouldn’t have been," he writes at one point, whereas on TV "everything was black, or white, and a lot like life."

Really, i can't recommend this book more! I love it! Have you read it?

First post

hemorrhager

February 11th, 2009

I don't know if Livejournal has a solid human anthropology community. So maybe this'll be one.

Sites worth mentioning:
Racial Reality
Anthropoligical Research Page
..and Stormfront!

Anyway, let's get this show on the road.