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.
Italian photographer and photojournalist Ruben Salvadori has done an excellent ethnographic study on the staging of action photos in East Jerusalem. Watch the video (in Italian with English subtitles) here . This will change the way in which you view photos… Read More ›
The Seafarers International Research Institute (SIRC) in Cardiff have concluded a large-scale study of fatigue among seafarers and have produced a 30-minute movie which summarises their questions and findings. The SIRC team studied merchant mariners and fishermen. As Andy… Read More ›
Two Britons (believe that they) live the daily lives of Native Americans in… Coventry, UK, in 2011. ( link ) Is this a case of postmodern decoupling of biological determinism and socio-cultural traditions? One of the comments mocks these folks… Read More ›
“Everybody has heard the women’s stories. But nobody has heard the men’s.” No one talks of male rape – yet it happens – as an instrument of war, as well as outside war. Yet this systemical silence does nothing to… Read More ›
The Idle Ethnographer fell in love with these photos and has nothing more to say. This is not yet sociology – but it is certainly food for hungry proto-sociological imaginations. Just wanted to share them – click on this link… Read More ›
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has won a small battle for religious tolerance and freedom of appearance in the face (or, rather, head), of Niko Alm, a devout Austrian pastafarian, who was recently granted the right to appear… Read More ›
PhD comics have made a movie! Each grad student should be excited by this new opportunity for productive procrastination! Check out the trailer here. So-o-o… it is currently being screened only at the wrong side of the Atlantic, but would… Read More ›
As an Eastern European researcher who researches Eastern Europe… you guessed it. The Idle Ethnographer could not stop herself from contributing a tongue-in-cheek (or, rather, ball-in-net) post to the SI Sport Week. This is yet another photo from the long… Read More ›
Two new exciting pieces of music-related news which seem somehow connected. On 2 June, YouTube introduced the option for uploaders and remixers to use the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY). Read more on Boingboing who says: At launch, YouTube… Read More ›
This year, the original `The picture of Dorian Gray’ has been published as an `annotated, uncensored version’. So, it turns out that the book that so many have admired had actually been censured!
Enough talk about women and work this week, let’s talk about brains. Just joking. I am a woman, after all. So: a recent article by Bill Keller reminded me that there can never be too many articles worrying about what… Read More ›
A quick message: My Perestroyka is finally in the UK! It is screening tonight, 24 May, at 8.30 at the London Documentary Film Festival at the Rich Mix cinema. More information: here . The screening will be followed by a panel… Read More ›
Jackie Kay of the Guardian argues the case of poetry in a lovely (if old) article. Perhaps she is right (even though I instinctively shudder at the sheer glance of something proudly entitled `Costa book awards’. It must be the… Read More ›
Two interesting websites promoting a new image of parenthood with practical examples. GeekDad’s subtitle is Raising generation 2.0, and GeekMom’s tagline is Smart. Savvy. Social. What is so interesting is the conscious effort to manage parenting according to certain principles… Read More ›
Scientific studies rarely venture into the realm of the irrational; yet it seems that that is exactly where we could find answers to many of the unsolved connundrums of modern medicine. A recent paper published in Science Translational Medicine, is… Read More ›
![Not shown: the approximately 30,000 identical, vaguely hysterical articles titled "WHITE PEOPLE IN [THE US/BRITAIN] TO BECOME MINORITY BY [YEAR]!", which came up for basically any year I put in.](https://i0.wp.com/sociologicalimagination.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/future_timeline.png?resize=120%2C120)
…What do we think the future hold for us? Some of these imagined futures seem ridiculous, others seem possible. XKCD have done a Google search and found out…
The Idle Ethnographer loiters at a Royal Wedding celebration at Warwick University, striving to catch that elusive spirit of Britishness. For more photos: click here.
In his article TEN LIES OF ETHNOGRAPHY : Moral Dilemmas of Field Research (published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 1993 22: 267), Gary Alan Fine discusses the dilemmas faced by ethnographic researchers. He singles out the “classic virtues” (the… Read More ›
Traditional anthropology and ethnography are all about daring researchers originating from civilised Western European countries venturing into unknown territories to spend half their lives living with fascinating, backward tribes. They defy the comfy practice of armchair theorising and instead theorise… Read More ›
Yet another take on the happiness/misery debate. Are weather and housing prices the most important reasons to be happy? Really? Still, this account of the allegedly decreasing happiness of California residents is rather amusing to read.
The Idle Ethnographer is on the loose again. Stay tuned for new cité-seeing and people-watching accounts. (* Bentō: Japanese boxed lunch. Delicious.)
It is a public secret that the European agricultural industry relies heavily on cheap and precarious migrant labour: mostly Moroccans, West Africans, and, since about a decade ago, also Eastern-Europeans. Here is one of the few pieces of investigative journalism… Read More ›
On my fifth birthday, my mother asked me what I wanted for lunch: spaghetti or soup. I hesitated. Unexpectedly, she grew impatient. ‘You have FIVE seconds to make up your mind. Decide.’ And she counted down. I hesitated for three… Read More ›
Her blank eyes gaze at you from her white face, her button nose a sunshine yellow. A dainty bow rests askew on her left ear, the color matching the day’s adorable—not to mention perfectly coordinated—outfit. Cute, one almost overlooks an… Read More ›
Happy Monday morning to all readers who find themselves in their offices right now. If you wonder how alarm clocks managed to make us so dependent upon them, read this article in the BBC magazine.
It is incredible how much an octagenarian piece of animation can tell you. I’ll only give away a snippet of its background: This is the first Soviet animation film ever made. It was produced in February 1924, by director Dziga… Read More ›
You are not seriously checking out SI on Christmas Eve! Well, if you are – we have to make you laugh. And yes, this is sociological: if knowing about Others makes them less other, more human, there is no better… Read More ›
You can invariably trust the Idle Ethnographer to come up with a refreshing pre-Christmas read. So, it is the beginning of the XXI century? So, we’ve had the Holocaust in Europe, the Apartheid in South Africa, and racial segregation in… Read More ›
It is hard to explain what PhD research is, using words: there seems to be a consensus about this across disciplines, from qualitative sociology to mathematical physics and beyond. As someone who has been doing one for over three years,… Read More ›
Have you ever heard someone rant at their computer, as if it were a living creature? Ever done if yourself? This brilliant short article deconstructs anthropomorphic usage of language in relation to machines using examples from the life of hackers,… Read More ›