Category Archives: Folklore and Proverbs

CUNY talk on Islam in Digital Humanities

Anthropology/Sociology, Conferences and Talks, CyberOrient, Folklore and Proverbs, Islamophobia, Yemen


Traditional Plow Agriculture in highland Yemen, for which there are many proverbs

When “Being There” is Here: An Anthropologist at Large in Digital Humanities

On Wednesday, March 5, I will be giving a talk at the CUNY Graduate Center for the Program on Religion, directed by Prof. Bryan Turner. Lunch will be served, and coffee too, of course. The talk will be in room 5307 of the Graduate Center at 34th St. and 5th Avenue, 12.30-2 (lunch served from 12.15), to discuss a topic pertinent to many disciplines.

Abstract:

The aim of this talk is to explore the role of traditional field-based ethnography in the rapidly evolving world of digital humanities. I look back on my original ethnographic fieldwork in Yemen in 1978-79, before there was an Internet or laptop computer. While technology has long been an important resource for anthropologists, the digital world allows for instantaneous contact in a way never available before. There is now a role for e-ethnography, analysis of representation and communication in cyberspace in which the field literally comes to the computer of the researcher. The talk will explore the implications of recent advances in the digital humanities on the nature and future of anthropological research.

Daniel Martin Varisco is President of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies. He is the founding editor of CyberOrient, an online journal co-sponsored by the American Anthropological Association and Charles University in Prague. His last book was Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (2007) and he is currently finishing a book titled Culture Still Matters: Notes from the Field.

Making Music in Yemen

Folklore and Proverbs, Music and Dance, Yemen


Photograph by Ali Abulohoom

The Yemeni Turbi

by Ali Abulohoom, Yemen Times, August 22, 2013

When he was 8 years old, Fuad Al-Qotari found a piece of wood lying around while playing with some neighborhood kids. He later learned that the object was actually a turbi, an instrument that had nearly disappeared from the Yemeni music scene after the 1920s.

Shortly after discovering his new find, Al-Qotari left Hashed district and moved with his family to the country’s capital, Sana’a, exposing him to more music. He began to follow many of the day’s most accomplished musicians and starting saving money for his own instrument.

His first instrument was the oud, and he was fascinated with its construction. “How [this] instrument was made interested me more than playing [it],” Al-Quotari said.

While he played some tunes of other musicians, his curiosity about the oud’s design was too strong. He put his instrument in water for hours and waited until it fell apart so that he could study each individual part. Continue reading Making Music in Yemen →

Muslim Journeys

Film and Video, Folklore and Proverbs, Islam in America, Islam: Introduction, Islamic History, Miniatures, Scholars, Teaching Resources

The National Endowment for the Humanities has a fantastic website on Islam with a variety of resources, especially valuable for teaching about Islam, but also just for browsing. The outreach part of the project is “The Muslim Journeys Bookshelf,” a collection of 25 books and 3 films, noted as “a collection of resources carefully curated to present to the American public new and diverse perspectives on the people, places, histories, beliefs, practices, and cultures of Muslims in the United States and around the world.” American libraries can apply for receipt of this collection. Available on the site are images, samples from texts, audio recordings and short film clips, web links and a bibliography.This website is worth spending a few hours on and coming back to; it is precisely what a virtual museum should be.

Here is a sample text excerpt to whet your appetite. This is from al-Jahiz, who died in 869 CE, on “The Disadvantages of Parchment”
Continue reading Muslim Journeys →

Agricultural policy in Yemen’s highlands and lowlands

Agriculture, Anthropology/Sociology, Development, Folklore and Proverbs, Picturing Yemen (by Varisco), Yemen


Terraced fields below al-Saraha in valley of al-Ahjur; photograph by Daniel Martin Varisco

by Zaid Ali Alwazir, La Voix du Yemen, June 9, 2013

Agricultural policy describes a set of laws related to the local farming and imported agricultural products from abroad. These laws are supposed to be implemented to get certain results such as utilizing the land, operating it or stabilizing prices of imported and local products.

Since the start of the “youth revolution” in Yemen, talks about the political and economic reforms got increased without focusing on “the agricultural economy” as if it was not part of the general “economy”. Therefore, no attention was paid by reformers to this issue since their talks had been focusing on “the material economy” such as “taxes”, “Zakat” and others.

“Agricultural economy” is not given the required attention despite the fact that agricultural development would feed the budget with more income, boost up farmers’ capacity to give more and optimize their living standards to ensure their welfare. Continue reading Agricultural policy in Yemen’s highlands and lowlands →