My research is on informal transborder trade in used clothing between the Republic of Bénin and Nigeria. Theoretically, I am interested in the Sociology of Association or Actor-Network Theory. I am also interested in New Institutional Economics and the ways institutions affect trade and economic behavior. There are of course others that I cannot think of at the moment. I will write about them as they arise.

I have just created a new blog - Native Anthropologist - here on Anthroblogs.

The blog is going to be about general anthropological issues that I find interesting. At the moment I am on fieldwork in the used clothing market in Cotonou, around the border area between Benin and Nigeria, and at the retail markets in Lagos, Nigeria. Actually, I am typing this message at the market, in front of 'my' shop. So, I might end up talking about my fieldwork and research on the blog.

Yea, that is all for the moment. See you at www.anthroblogs.org/nativeanthropologist!

Why is it that we do not have any control over our news? For example, a big announcement was made today about the origins of hominid bipedalism dating to 6 rather than 3.5 million years ago. The research, conducted by Brian Richmond and William Jungers came out in the March 21 issue of Science. I wrote a light piece about it on my blog but why wasn't I able learn about this cool bit of anthropology on an anthropology feed? I did hear about it from a US News and World Report feed but I wish we had our own feed that rivaled theirs.

I have a project I have started with a group of anthro majors in my program at Fresno State called "Making Anthropology Public". Like AnthroBlogs, our blog is intended to make Anthropology real for the rest of the world.

As inductive analysts, Anthropologists have skills most others lack. My hope now is to get more people thinking about these issues for the betterment of our field.

The auspicious inaugural post went straight to work, reporting on the Executive Committee's Statement on the Human Terrain System (i.e., anthropologist spies/advisers on the ground in Iraq). The permalink to the post is here; the Statement is found here.

Welcome to the blogosphere, AAA and especially one technology-averse Board member I happen to know well!

I wanted to remind everyone that the SfAA podcasts from the 67th Annual Meeting of the SfAA will be taken down from this website on August 1, 2007. To this end, make sure you download the podcasts that you want before then. Also, if you know someone that might be interested in any of the recordings- make sure you tell them about the website soon so that they will have the opportunity to download the podcasts before then too. After August 1 there will be more frequent updates, calls for help, and calls for participation on this site, so please continue to subscribe to this site's RSS feed or email updates of new posts so that you don't miss out! If you've had thoughts/comments/complaints/etc. that you haven't submitted, now would be a great time to do that too so that they can be considered when we plan for next year!

Why are the podcasts being taken down you ask?

What an excellent question! The decision to make the files available for a few months was mainly based on two factors. Tom May and I picked a date to remove the files after hearing some participants concerns of having the files available long-term. Also, we are storing the files on a file server at the University of North Texas this year. The Center for Distributed Learning at UNT was not able to guarantee free server space past the date.

Going forward, I believe that we (still looking for volunteers!) will keep the files up either permanently or for a longer period of time. This will all depend on how much feedback and communication we receive from participants on the matter. The server space for next year has been taken care of, so that will no longer be a factor.

Link to SfAApodcasts.net

On beaches (in Spanish): http://amp-pr.org/antropico

(cross-posted at Nomadic Thoughts)

So, I'm a 1.5 generation Filipino immigrant who's working on his Master's thesis in social anthropology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. I'm planning on moving my old posts over to Anthroblogs, but that involves Perl and scripting and work, and (1) I suck at programming, (2) I've never used Perl before, and (3) I'm trying to finish a chapter of my thesis to include in applications to PhD schools, which all means that I won't have time to properly set up my new blog anytime this year. But if anyone is better at Perl than me, who only started learning it 2 days ago, I would dearly love to benefit from your expertise. I've already found 2 scripts on the Internet that will mostly do what I want, which is migrating posts from my old blog to my new one. Moving comments would also be nice, but moving the posts is essential. But I'm having trouble figuring out what parameters to set and such, so I need help with that.

Anyway, I thought I'd just start blogging on the new site and worry about all that later. I'm glad to join Anthroblogs and I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

(cross-posted on Nomadic Thoughts)