urbanthropology

an obama pumpkin for election day.

We must, before all else, compile as large as possible a catalogue of categories; we must begin with all those which we can know that mankind has used. Then it will be seen that in the firmament of reason there have been, and there still are, many moons that are dead, or pale, or obscure.

- marcel mauss

We descended slowly, drifting at peace like leaves falling through the jumble of boulders and giant tree trunks, falling like dreams and wraiths of memories and fluttering flags past lonely shrines and remains of altars scattered in the stream’s course. There was nobody but us…

-michael taussig,the magic of the state

(photo=fall on the northeast corridor)

Now, to be clear, our tools do not turn us into automatons; technology can always be resisted, or broken, or abandoned, or tinkered with, or replaced altogether, or ignored. But as anyone who has ever used a word processor, or picked up a tennis racquet, or ridden on a subway surely knows, our tools also shape how we think, what we aspire to achieve, where we choose to go.

-annelise riles

(photo= restaurant window in philadelphia)

…the world of formal courts offers a stage- as intense as ritual, as demonstrative as war- through which a society reveals itself to its own people as much as to the outside world.

- larry rosen

(photo= tel aviv street art in august.)

We are never assured of retrieving a perception in the same way we felt it the first time; for even if the thing perceived is unchanged, we ourselves are no longer the same.

-emile durkheim

There is an emerging tendency toward spontaneous agreement on this point, which is worth noting for it creates a presumption of objectivity.

-emile durkheim. armchair anthropology’s mantra? or party joke?

Not in law school anymore…

Berkeley. Even the garbage is delicious.

And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn’t act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it’s not convenient— it’s not useful— to believe this; it doesn’t help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it. 

- julian barnes