Rex, over at anthro blog Savage Minds, was questioning (or just asking about) people’s use of “Euro-American” as a label for different groups of people. He was concerned about ethnic and/or “racial” connotations.
Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » No but seriously: Euro-American?
Looks like I did use “Euro-American” here. On purpose, no less.
So… What do I mean by “Euro-American,” you ask? Well, it depends on context. And as I like to talk about context and terminological precision, I wrote a lengthy comments on Rex’s blogpost. Here’s an edited version. (The original version is on Savage Minds.)
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5 Comments | tags: academic blogging, Afro-American, Anglo-American, Euro-American, European-American, Immanuel Wallerstein, Marilyn Strathern, Max Weber, political correctness, post-industrial, Savage Minds, terminological precision, terminology, Western, whites, World-System Theory | posted in Anthropology
Via BoingBoing.
Who says Africans lack business acumen?
(Actually, such methods of empowerment are quite common, throughout Africa. And many Africans are rightfully proud of being able to manage by themselves. When will people from OECD “nations” get this?)
Leave a comment | tags: Afrique, bottom-up, editorial, film shorts, Foreign Investment, optimist alter-globalization, Periphery, World politics, World-System Theory | posted in Africa, alter-globalization, applied anthropology, creativity, cultural diversity, development, development strategies, economics, Empowerment, Ethnography, foreign policy, globalization, humanism, innovation, market economy, optimism, ramblings, rants, social change, stereotypes, success in life, technology
First encountered the notion of the Medici effect through this interview with Frans Johansson in Ubiquity, a journal frequently mentioned on the Humanist Discussion Group.
A recent article about important changes coming from simple ideas made me post a short blog entry about changes from simple ideas. Interestingly enough, Johansson himself posted a comment to that entry.
This is in fact a frequent stream of thought, for me. In both business and academia, we tend to live through ideas. Specific ideas. Especially those which can generate money or research projects. An important dimension of the “Medici Effect” seems to be that simple ideas can lead to great accomplishments. Another important dimension is that ideas are both generated in and implemented by groups. Some social contexts seem especially conducive to new ideas. This perspective is well-known enough that even Denys Arcand’s Invasions Barbares had something to say about it.
There’s a lot of directions one could take to talk about innovation from that point. Among the possible threads: artistic creativity, personal innovation, sense of discovery, the economies of ideas, ideas come from the people, “intellectual property,” fluid/organic innovation, boundless ideas, innovation through links between ideas, Lavoisier on ideas (nothing is created or lost, everything is transformed, including ideas), and so on and so forth.
My personal feeling is that the very concept of innovation has become something of a “core value” for a number of people, especially in industrialized society. The type of “newer is better” view of “progress” in both society and technology.
In my mind, the best thing to do is simply to bring ideas together, a “shock of ideas” («le choc des idées»). Hence the long list of tags… 😉
Leave a comment | tags: achievements, art as process, artistic, bricolage, bullish perspective, business, busy life, Chindia, collaboration, collage, cooperatives, dilettante, Game Theory, guild, homme à idées, homo ludens, information management, information wants to be free, lab, leapfrog effect, Marcel Gotlib, mashups, Media Lab, Medici effect, memetic marketplace, meritocracy, non-professionnel, non-specialists, plagiarism, Prix de Rome, publish or perish, Samba schools, Slightly Better Muffin, theory of flow, time management, transmission, universalism, waves, wiki, World-System Theory | posted in Academia, aesthetics, alter-globalization, amateurs, art, college life, commodities, Communities, consumerism, creation, Creative Commons, creativity, cultural capital, development, development strategies, economics, Empowerment, experimentation, globalization, grassroots, humanism, hype, individualism, innovation, intellectual property, interdisciplinarity, ivory tower, knowledge, knowledge management, knowledge people, Learning, market economy, memes, mindshare, naïve, politics, popular culture, prestige, product and process, productivity, professionals, ramblings, research, science, social capital, social change, social networks, specialists, success in life, technology, writing
Was listening to the portafilter.net podcast (Episode 23) and thinking about coffee shops, cafés, brewpubs, bars, bands, venues…
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10 Comments | tags: appropriation, bottom-up, competition, cooperatives, Core, fair-trade, freshness, global, homebrewed, monopolies, oligarchies, Periphery, production, quality, schizophonia, Semi-Periphery, specialty coffee, venue, Wallerstein, World-System Theory | posted in alter-globalization, Beer, beer scene, brewpubs, café, Coffee, coffee scenes, commodities, consumption, craft, craft beer, globalization, glocal, grassroots, innovation, local, localization, Montreal, music, music scenes, performance, product and process, ramblings, recording industry, taste