happily lost in translation

In light of recent events, including my friend going off to France to teach English at a school, as well as a discussion in class about studying Anthropology in other countries, I decided to research anything I could find on French Anthropology.

One girl in my class had studied in France and she shared her experiences. What I took away was that French Anthropologists are focussed on different theories and methods from what I've been learning in Canada. She mentioned an emphasis on continued studies of Levi-Strauss' ideas and theory that we in Canada have been taught to think of as a part of history that we have progressed away from. However, she also made sure to convey the attitude of change and desire to move away from these older ideas in French studies, and that they aren't all convinced that Levi-Strauss is the be all and end all of anthropological theory.

So I came across an interesting link, from none other than Wikipedia, to an anthropological social network called MASN. As I discovered, it is a meeting place, not unlike a blog, with links to anything you could ever want to learn about Anthropology. It includes a forum for anthro students around the world to congregate, links to anthropology references, journals, and blogs. It is free to join and my impression is encouragement of idea-sharing. What I really liked about the self-written description of the site is that "everyone should consider her/himself as a node in the network where new threads can connect and enlargen the existing network".


I personally have been increasingly curious about Anthropology in other countries, as my own undergraduate educational career in Anthropology comes to an end and I consider my future in this field. I think it's important for Canadian students to get a grasp on what is out there beyond studying Canada's (and subsequently, Europe's) history. One negative I have noticed, and I'm sure I am not alone in this, is that most Canadian universities don't offer studies on international anthropological pasts. I can also understand that there is only so much students can learn and only so many courses universities can offer (financially), however, I have had to dig in on my own time to research any information on anthropology (especially archaeology) in other countries.

In my mind, Canadian archaeology is somewhat of a limited field, because there are essetianlly 2 main streams of history that are studied- European contact and Native Canadian culture. I am in no way claiming that indigenous peoples' cultures in Canada has not changed greatly, but the foundations of these cultures are still existent today (if in no other way than the names of these peoples and their personal struggles to maintain tradition in a modern world). In my opinion, archaeology in "the old world" could be considered more variable, simply due to the massive amount of cultures that have emerged and died out. Everything from the thousand years of Egyptian existence, the Celts, Roman empire, Gaul, Ottoman empire, Ancient Greece, Norse, Chinese empire, India, and the massive histories in Africa (which to biological anthropologists is considered the origins of the human species itself).

I could go on, but I think the point is that in Canada, some students, such as myself, long for a more fantastical foreign field of study. I cannot speak for international students of anthropology, but we have grown up learning about the indigenous peoples of Canada and European contact as the foundation of our history classes beginning in elementary school. To put it bluntly, it gets tiring. Obviously when students reach the stage of university level studies, the interest and attention to detail is what drives us, but what is missing is the excitement of learning about something totally different.

There is a lot to be said for reflexivity in anthropology, and I think this is a clear case of considering one's position in anthropological thought. There has been a shift in anthropology, especially cultural, in studying one's own niche in society. I realize that some people may consider this more difficult, because it requires constant consciousness of biases, but maybe because I am a romantic and have always seen myself as traveling and discovering new places, but one of the core motivations for anthropology's beginnings was the excitement of learning about different peoples. Nowadays the world has become so small due to globalization that there are no people that are unknown, and the word "remote" has been eradicated from a modern anthropologists vocabulary. This makes it harder for some students who have traditional ideas about the adventure and excitement of anthropology in new settings because someone has always gotten there first.

I have read about ancient Chinese artifacts being found that lead to new discoveries from an already studied culture. I have heard stories from my mother's travels http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifin Costa Rica where she hiked past artifacts from unnamed and unstudied cultures in the jungle. I see photos of tombs yielding new mummies that fill in the historical gaps of the popular field of Egyptology. These are just examples of what I draw hope from for the fulfillment of my goals in Anthropology.

This post has gone off in a direction that I did not expect, but I guess it all ties together in this link that I found. I hope that anyone who reads this will have their interest piqued as much as mine has been. I think this is the beginning of a new direction for anthropology, not only collaboration between the four subdisciplines, but internationally as well.