You Deserve an Explanation
If I had come into a room and started talking about my fieldwork experiences without explaining who I am, you might have found that a bit rude and you would be right. So why would one begin a blog that way? I think its time for me to backtrack a little.
In the simplest terms, this is a space for me to collect together certain experiences I have had while doing anthropological fieldwork/ethnography (two very very close but not identical practices) in a way that people outside the field can understand and even enjoy, free of jargon or the constricted types of communication common in the halls of the academy.
This benefits me and it benefits you too: You have the chance to experience very interesting things vicariously and I get to experiment with the border between fiction, nonfiction and ethnographic writing. Most of what you read here is literally a reproduction of what I remember, but we are always fictionalizing to some extent. I also get to enjoy just playing with words rather than writing for the publication-hussle, something one just can't do all the time.
Anthropology is one of the disciplines that is having one of the loudest discussions about getting out of the ivory tower and becoming relevant, building bridges to the outside world and media. Luckily, I am not going to try to sell you the notion that you desperately need complicated social science topics in your life. But, I will share some of my experiences and with an agenda.
Among my agendas there are two very key ones: One is working to eliminate misunderstandings about both the lands of Islam and the wider 'developing world' (developing in what ways? development is vast) that are at the root of much of the violence we are witnessing in the world, if we are paying attention. I also want to vastly expand our ideas of what healing and wellness are about. These interests have taken me in all sorts of directions, again not necessarily ones that fit well into the scholarly categories we have so far, but which have lead to vivid experiences nonetheless.
And who am I exactly?
I am a southern boy who grew up in Texas and Southern California. In high school I started developing a passion for languages and comparative religion. Well, honestly, even as a boy I was trying to teach myself Chinese (with the help of bemused fellow elementary school students from Taiwan) and acting like a spooky miniature anthropologist in the Dallas Museum of Natural History. After high school I started an almost uninterrupted journey as an expat that lasted for some 15 years (and perhaps hasn't ended yet) during which time I lived or stayed for extended periods in quite a few places: the UK, The Netherlands, Spain, Israel/Palestinian Authority and Turkey. I have been fortunate to travel much further afield than that and also to have done brief periods of fieldwork in Mexico and South Africa.
Come back. I promise to tell you more.
In the simplest terms, this is a space for me to collect together certain experiences I have had while doing anthropological fieldwork/ethnography (two very very close but not identical practices) in a way that people outside the field can understand and even enjoy, free of jargon or the constricted types of communication common in the halls of the academy.
This benefits me and it benefits you too: You have the chance to experience very interesting things vicariously and I get to experiment with the border between fiction, nonfiction and ethnographic writing. Most of what you read here is literally a reproduction of what I remember, but we are always fictionalizing to some extent. I also get to enjoy just playing with words rather than writing for the publication-hussle, something one just can't do all the time.
Anthropology is one of the disciplines that is having one of the loudest discussions about getting out of the ivory tower and becoming relevant, building bridges to the outside world and media. Luckily, I am not going to try to sell you the notion that you desperately need complicated social science topics in your life. But, I will share some of my experiences and with an agenda.
Among my agendas there are two very key ones: One is working to eliminate misunderstandings about both the lands of Islam and the wider 'developing world' (developing in what ways? development is vast) that are at the root of much of the violence we are witnessing in the world, if we are paying attention. I also want to vastly expand our ideas of what healing and wellness are about. These interests have taken me in all sorts of directions, again not necessarily ones that fit well into the scholarly categories we have so far, but which have lead to vivid experiences nonetheless.
And who am I exactly?
I am a southern boy who grew up in Texas and Southern California. In high school I started developing a passion for languages and comparative religion. Well, honestly, even as a boy I was trying to teach myself Chinese (with the help of bemused fellow elementary school students from Taiwan) and acting like a spooky miniature anthropologist in the Dallas Museum of Natural History. After high school I started an almost uninterrupted journey as an expat that lasted for some 15 years (and perhaps hasn't ended yet) during which time I lived or stayed for extended periods in quite a few places: the UK, The Netherlands, Spain, Israel/Palestinian Authority and Turkey. I have been fortunate to travel much further afield than that and also to have done brief periods of fieldwork in Mexico and South Africa.
Come back. I promise to tell you more.
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