Baklava is a recent Bulgarian film which was banned as soon as it was released a couple of years ago due to allegations of content unsuitable for the screen, including violence, indecency and child pornography. Allegations aside, the film presents a bleak,… Read More ›
The Idle Ethnographer 
Welcome to the portable e-soapbox of a sociologist with too much time on her hands. Milena Kremakova is fascinated by too many things and refuses to devote her time single-mindedly to any one pursuit. In this column she gives voice to one of her thinking selves: that of a perpetual traveller comfortably stuck between the positions of outsider and insider, geared to discover the unusual even in the most mundane setting, and always having something to say (or show). She pledges to irregulary scribble thin, unabashedly empirical quasi-ethnographic observations, loosely driven by pre-developed concepts, while promiscuously recycling insights from sociological theories.
Sometimes she tweets short thoughts as @idlEthnographer.
The Idle Ethnographer picks up a spade
The Idle Ethnographer is back in the field. I am doing some follow-up, and some new, interviews with maritime people in Bulgaria. Most of the previous ones were done 4-5 years ago, just before the effects of the 2008-9 financial… Read More ›
The “Communist Monopoly” Game
If you like board games, you’ll love the Waiting Game. Well, not sure that you’ll actually enjoy it (though you might!), but you’ll certainly learn something. As someone who grew up in a still socialist Bulgaria, I do remember the… Read More ›
Why did men stop wearing high heels?
Finally a good article explaining the craze of high heels with the help of some well-researched historical evidence. After years of being baffled why on earth (rather, above earth) half of the (rich) world’s population is expected (and often cherishes… Read More ›
The riddle of modern day hermits
Every now and then, people who have rejected society get caught under its radar and their solitary lives make it into newspapers. Three recent stories in the papers talked about such contemporary recluses living simple (or, rather, very difficult) lives… Read More ›
Immigration in the UK
The survey shown in the above picture shows that a large percentage of the British population is worried about immigrants coming into the country. But is it really that much of a problem? Read about the multicultural success of Slough… Read More ›
Sociology of … outer space?
I started this post as a one-sentence note about a future field called “sociology of space”. The idea came while I was reading this BBC article on some of the problems encountered the crew of a spaceship going to Mars. The article… Read More ›
Happy New Year! (Mieow!)
Always fascinating to look back into history and find out that all new things are well forgotten old ones. We don’t get tired by celebrating New Year (OK, we do, but we forget about the tiredness after a year and… Read More ›
Daddy Leave in Norway
This is the Idle Ethnographer’s share of social advertising for today. In Norway, 90% of men take their 3 months leave, while in the UK only 40% of men take the 2 week daddy leave to which they are entitled… Read More ›
Trees and happiness
A recent report unearthed an empirical link between happiness and …trees. I wonder if Christmas trees could also help us be happy? Read the article in the Guardian here.
The Woollen T-shirt Strikes Back
(reposted from 300daysinberlin.wordpress.com where the Idle Ethnographer posts not entirely sociological impressions about being a foreigner, once again) I have owned this goddamnugly woollen T-shirt since I can remember myself, and that was a pretty long time ago: some time in… Read More ›
Sociologists also have fun
A glimpse into the sociology student culture in Germany… Here is how sociology students at the Humboldt University in Berlin advertised their first semester party a few days ago:
The death toll of postsocialist mass privatisation
In 2007-2009, I did over 50 interviews with Bulgarian maritime workers. I wanted to study the post-socialist transformations of institutions and practices of maritime labour – and how those changes affected the working lives of seafarers and other maritime workers…. Read More ›
Jews and Tattoos, or What happens when religion clashes with everyday life?
I recently learnt that among the rules that Orthodox Jews observe is not tattooing their skin. This made sense initially and I thought that the reason was the forceful branding of people in concentration camps. However, the prohibition is in… Read More ›
India’s XXI century untouchables
I recently talked to Pradeep Shinde, an anthropologist who studies the performance of work by sanitary workers in a Mumbai slum. He argues that the caste system in India is still very much present, and that alongside the changes caste-related… Read More ›
The evolution of mobile phones
Having coffee and waiting for a call. Once again, boredom proves the mother of great (or merely relatively entertaining) ideas. I am thinking about mobile phones. Fascinating things, aren’t they? I first saw a mobile phone (mobiphone) in the mid-1990s,… Read More ›
Ears, tongues, and teeth (or Phones, languages, and dentists)
Today I made my first (short) phone call entirely in German. It wasn’t easy, so I’m proud! The first thing is, I really dislike talking on the phone, regardless of language and conversation partner (though talking in a language I… Read More ›
Who Do You Really Want to Be? Dr Mayim Bialik’s commencement speech
Being editor is great. You get to impose things you love on the readers! Just joking. But, in all honesty, whether you are a Big Bang Theory fan or not, this is a lovely, useful, and inspiring commencement speech. Dr… Read More ›
My new, non-automated life
One of the most fascinating effects of moving to a new place is that for a few days and weeks nothing is obvious and everything requires attention. The same happens when migrating into a new language, but right now I’m… Read More ›
Accidental sociologists
Today I stumbled across an interesting biographical account by Sarah Burton, sociology postgraduate researcher, entitled The Accidental Sociologist. Sarah writes that she – as, it seems, a great many other sociologists – ended up in sociology ‘by chance’. She wonders… Read More ›
Privacy? What is that?
This article is a nice reminder of exactly how much we all share about ourselves through our mobile phones. It is very hard, if not impossible, to not leave a trace in this digital age; and these data remain recorded forever…. Read More ›
7 – 27 / 455 (Overpunctuated Autobiographical Sketch in 455 Words)
Happy birthday, Idle Ethnographer! 27 July 2012: 13 again 2008: TWENTY-SEVEN. Grown up… Not quite. PhD… Someday. Research. Teaching. Library. Doubts. Fallibility. Rise-ability. Responsibility. Conferences. Articles. Academic matrix. Tired, bored, fed up. Escapism. Creative writing workshops. Photography. Colours, angles,… Read More ›
A very brief critique of happiness studies
The NYTimes recently published yet another intriguing article, one of many, on the topic of happiness and the links between happiness and money: (you can read the article here), by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton. However, as a researcher of… Read More ›