What's Your Story?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In my last cultural Anthropology class, we spent the semester watching porn.

See? Wankers, the lot of them.

[Cain]

I spent the best part of a semester watching porn, as well.

Not for a course, just because I had a wicked internet connection.

[Nadezhda]

I was wondering when the noob hazing would happen to me 

I wear skinny jeans and and listen to shitty music anyway, so I probably am an academic hipster.

Archaeology is the Anthropology of the past, Khara, btw :P  All of the fields intercross, so to be an Archaeologist, you need to have some Physical anth skill to learn how to tell if a bone fragment is 1) not a piece of plastic and 2)is human or non-human.  Biological anthropologists tend to look more at living populations and primate history, in an evolutionary sense, and Physical anthropologists are more about being able to look at a bone fragment and be able to tell what race/gender/age the person it came from and how they died.  The Human Osteology course I just finished is a physical anth class, and the Med. Dr. who taught it told us that from it we'd know more about the skeleton than the average med student.  SRS BZNISS

If you hear of someone saying that they are or want to be a Medical Anthropologist, know that they are simply cultural anthropologists who like to hang around sick people and ass-kiss doctors, and that they should be extra reviled.

[Slyph]

I was watching a documentary a little while back I'd really like to find again... I think it may have been on Channel 4, It was about this tribe that became like, kind of a big deal in I think the seventies, first the hippies loved them because they were believed to be living in perfect natural harmoniesss!!!

Then like, a second anthropologist was studying their ritualized warfare and conclusions were drawn that the apparently random skirmishes followed complex familial lines, so evolutionary-psychological conclusions were drawn from that, and then it was proved that it was all bullshit

Then it turned out that the natives had been feeding the antropologists false lines like, "His name is "Big Dick" " or something,

Then one of the anthropologists took a damn thirteen year old bride from the tribe and took her with him to America and insisted anyone who thought this was sketchy was a racist who felt they were culturally superior to the tribe.

Then there was a strain of Malaria coming up the river they lived near, (I think they may have been from Peru), and like, the more conservatively minded anthropologist with the ev-psych project started vaccinating them like crazy, and a lot of them died from bad vaccine reactions, but he insists he saved more than he harmed,

But it later turned out he was in the pocket of some nuclear preparedness thinktank, they were putting up the money for all his projects, and people started suggesting that the malarial outbreak was a cover, and that he was actually just testing how vaccines react with subjects completely virginal of modern medical interventions for after-the-end scenarios... Yeah, and this was a popular theory too, that this anthropologist had actually crossed over into genocidal medical experiments, like he was shunned in some places over this...

Wish I could remember the name of the doc. or even the tribe...

[MMIX]

From the detail you give, Slyph, it is almost certainly the Yanomami you are thinking about. There are too many documentaries on the Yanomami to identify the particular one you saw but there is an interesting freebie book online about the controversy and damage that anthropological "interference" has caused.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/52116718/free-online-minibook

[Cain]

Both of those ring bells with me, but I wasn't aware they were the same tribe.

[Lenin McCarthy]

I go to school. Just finished my first year of the Norwegian equivalent of high school (yup, I'm a young'un).
I lurk about on the internet.
I take walks.
I read a lot of books.
I engage in politics.
I am a quite shy person.
Except for the occasional beer or glass of wine I don't really do drugs.
I play the piano.
I listen to music.
I think about life, the universe 'n stuff.

[Juana]

Nice to meet you. 

Biological and physical anthropologists do that.

Cultural anthropologists try and rip off French philosophers they don't understand to make a point about cultural relativism and the poverty of Western consumerist life.  They're academic hipsters.

Oh yes, and analyzing things through Freud.

[Triple Zero]

In my last cultural Anthropology class, we spent the semester watching porn.

Did you "go  native" ?

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

Archaeology is the Anthropology of the past, Khara, btw :P  All of the fields intercross, so to be an Archaeologist, you need to have some Physical anth skill to learn how to tell if a bone fragment is 1) not a piece of plastic and 2)is human or non-human.  Biological anthropologists tend to look more at living populations and primate history, in an evolutionary sense, and Physical anthropologists are more about being able to look at a bone fragment and be able to tell what race/gender/age the person it came from and how they died.  The Human Osteology course I just finished is a physical anth class, and the Med. Dr. who taught it told us that from it we'd know more about the skeleton than the average med student.  SRS BZNISS

If you hear of someone saying that they are or want to be a Medical Anthropologist, know that they are simply cultural anthropologists who like to hang around sick people and ass-kiss doctors, and that they should be extra reviled.

Thanks, I have a hard time looking stupid enough all on my own.