Author: Kerim

P. Kerim Friedman is a professor in the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures at National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan. His research explores language revitalization efforts among indigenous Taiwanese, looking at the relationship between language ideology, indigeneity, and political economy. An ethnographic filmmaker, he co-produced the Jean Rouch award-winning documentary, ‘Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!’ about a street theater troupe from one of India’s Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs).

kerim.oxus.net/

We suck at (academic) politics

By Kerim | April 26, 2018

Ninety percent of the time if you were to read a blog post about academics and politics it would be a rant about “identity politics.” This isn’t going to be that kind of post. No, what I’m talking about here are “academic politics” in general. Since academic politics might involve trying to get an academic …

Roll Your Own QDA (Working With Text 5)

By Kerim | April 5, 2018

Many social scientists purchase expensive qualitative data analysis software to code their field notes and interview data, but I want to show how you can accomplish the same thing for free using Dynalist or Workflowy. Neither app is truly free, but they both offer generous free plans that allow you to do a lot before …

Hobbes the Science Fiction Writer (Part II)

By Kerim | March 25, 2018

In Part I, I explored how Hobbes’s myth was a kind of science fiction story designed convince his readers to end the English Civil War by accepting peace under the rule of a single sovereign. (For Hobbes that meant either King or Parliament, but not both.) I also discussed how that myth “requires both the …

Hobbes the Science Fiction Writer (Part I)

By Kerim | March 22, 2018

It is common to meet people who believe that much of the world is beset by “tribalism” and that the only thing holding back the chaos of a Hobbesian war of all against all is the presence of “strong leaders.” This worldview reached its apogee during the Cold War, when the US used it to …

Dendrites, Interns, Contributors, & Guest Contributors

By Kerim | March 15, 2018

Just a short announcement to point out that a couple of names have disappeared from our sidebar as we move to make our list of authors better reflect the actual nature of participation on the blog. Since we started as “Savage Minds” in 2005, the membership roles have been in constant flux and we’ve worked …

Lazy PowerPoint (Working With Text 4)

By Kerim | February 22, 2018

We all know we should bike to work, but sometimes the weather is bad, or we are late, or just feeling lazy, and so we take the car. Similarly, we all know that we shouldn’t use use PowerPoint, or if we do use PowerPoint we shouldn’t stuff them full of text and bullet points but …

Text-laundering (Working With Text 3)

By Kerim | January 28, 2018

Ever copy and paste something that should be a solid paragraph of text only to have it end up looking a mess? You could fix it using Regular Expressions, or if you prefer not to have to muddle around with code, there are a number of tools out there which can automate this kind of text cleanup for you.

RegEx 101 (Working With Text 2)

By Kerim | January 24, 2018

Let’s say that there was a revolution in your field site and the “Feline Republic” is now the “Canine Republic.” This is an easy problem to solve. You just open up your word processor and use the find and replace command, replacing every instance of “Feline” with “Canine.” But what if the canine revolution also …

Free Your Mind, the Text Will Follow (Working With Text 1)

By Kerim | January 18, 2018

While I’ve written a fair amount of software reviews and how to guides in the past, this year I thought I’d do something different. This is the first of a series of planned posts aimed at getting anthropologists to take back control of their text. I don’t mean that in an abstract way, as in …

Start an Anthropology Career in 2018

By Kerim | January 1, 2018

Lets put aside for the moment all the usual warnings about pursuing an academic career. Lets say that you are old enough to take responsibility for your own bad decisions and have somehow gotten it in your head that, despite everything you’ve heard, you really like the idea of becoming an anthropologist. If you really …