ASAA/NZ BLOG
This weeks digest contends with the importance and value of nostalgia. How it allows for us to have an escapism to times when ‘we’ felt safer, but, also creates a way to connect across generations over a shared popular medium. Finally showing its importance in creating cultural symbols and the emotions that allow for them to exist.
For this week's digest I am addressing space, spatial relations and the new craze of Pokemon GO. The power of the video games both to pop culture and to urban culture. How it becomes a potent force in altering their mutual understandings. Also giving a nod to the US military and the importance of the silence in enacting social change.
The Journal of the Polynesian Society has just released a special issue entitled Grave Matters in Oceania.
In light of mine and the social media worlds' overwhelming responses to Jesse William’s speech at the BET awards I am grounding this weeks digest in the opposite response. The issues of inward and outward stigma and discrimination. However can the world be completely brained when ‘we’ are often geared toward ignorance and misguided efforts.
In the light of the recent, heartbreaking, events in Pulse, an LGBTQI night club in Orlando I felt the need to use this week's digest to use to talk about the lives of those who identify as LGBTQI. Whether ‘in’ or ‘outside’ of the metaphorical closet I wanted to discuss the realities for those of us affected by the issues raised in the articles below. Highlighting that whether hidden or seen, safety is not something that is guaranteed and this can be largely influenced by the legislation that creates the ‘worlds’ we all exist within.
Victoria University of Wellington's Religious Studies Programme is hosting a conference investigating the relationships between Christianity and development in the Pacific. The event will be of particular interest to those with an interest in Pacific, international aid and development, anthropology, history, and religion.
This post continues our series on public anthropology in Aotearoa New Zealand. This week we profile Robyn Andrews and her work with Anglo-Indians.
With the constant pressure to do the ‘right’ thing. I have chosen to use this week's digest to explore the importance and validation of sometimes doing what is deemed to be ‘wrong’. Whether it be overly coddling the youth of today, defining a meaning, trial and error in the workplace or how you choose to present yourself to the world, the wrong can sometimes teach as many valuable and important lessons as the right.
