Anthropological Niche

The New Scientist has an interesting flash presentation of how the human brain works...

Girls/women are not the only ones that suffer medical problems and death from circumcision rituals.  According to an Austrialian news story, several boys have died in South America this year:

THIRTY-ONE teenage boys have died from complications after botched traditional circumcision rites in South Africa's rural Eastern Cape region.

"Since the beginning of June, two deaths are being recorded almost every day," regional health spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said.

"This is a grim situation that we deal with every year, the health department has rescued hundreds of boys from schools run by unscrupulous surgeons," he said.

Health authorities say the main causes of death, which have been concentrated in the rural Transkei area, are dehydration, hypothermia and excessive bleeding and that most boys only seek medical attention when it is too late.

Same-sex sex has been decriminalized in India!  According to the BBC News report:

A court in the Indian capital, Delhi, has ruled that homosexual intercourse between consenting adults is not a criminal act.

The ruling overturns a 148-year-old colonial law which describes a same-sex relationship as an "unnatural offence".

Homosexual acts were punishable by a 10-year prison sentence.

Many people in India regard same-sex relationships as illegitimate. Rights groups have long argued that the law contravened human rights.

From an article posted on the Chronicle [Wired] News:

Northwestern University has put online more than 7,000 rare photographs of East Africa that document the European colonization of the area from 1860 through 1960.

The images made available to the public today in the Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs were purchased by the university in 2002 for an undisclosed price.

According to Culture Matters, the new book, Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter: Reflections on Research in and of Corporations (Berghahn Books), appears to promise interesting content on corporate anthropology:

1) Melissa Cefkin: Introduction: Business, Anthropology, and the Growth of Corporate Ethnography      
2) Donna K. Flynn: “My Customers are Different!” Identity, Difference, and the Political Economy of Design
3) Chris Darrouzet, Helga Wild, and Susann Wilkinson: Participatory Ethnography at Work: Practicing in the Puzzle Palaces of a Large, Complex Healthcare Organization
4) Brigitte Jordan with Monique Lambert: Working in Corporate Jungles: Reflections on Ethnographic Praxis in Industry
5) Dawn Nafus and ken  anderson : Writing on Walls: The Materiality of Social Memory in Corporate Research   
6) Françoise Brun-Cottan: The Anthropologist as Ontological Choreographer
7) Martin Ortlieb: Emergent Culture, Slippery Culture: Conflicting Conceptualizations of Culture in Commercial Ethnography
8) Jeanette Blomberg: Insider Trading: Engaging and Valuing Corporate Ethnography
9) Michael M. J. Fischer: Emergent Forms of Life in Corporate Arenas