Notes sur Ndéba, une enceinte fortifiée à la frontière du Cameroun et du Nigéria : réflexions préliminaires entre archéologie et histoire

L'étude du site fortifié de Ndéba dans la région mambila du Cameroun (Adamaoua) laisse ressortir deux phases successives d'occupation : l'une datée du premier millénaire de notre ère, l'autre, marquée par la construction du fort, appartiendrait à la fin du XIXe siècle, voire au début du XXe. Cet établissement est un témoin intéressant de la période d'insécurité généralisée qui couvre tout le XIXe siècle, et qui est déjà connue par les sources historiques. Dans un tel contexte, peut-on le considérer comme l'illustration d'une manifestation de prise d'indépendance politique par une petite communauté de l'ouest du Cameroun central ? Cette réflexion est sans doute trop précoce, mais elle cherche à s'orienter vers une interrogation encore non résolue sur les antécédents de ce témoin archéologique visible et sur son enracinement éventuel dans le temps long

Interactive multimedia ethnography: Archiving workflow, interface aesthetics and metadata

Digital heritage archives often lack engaging user interfaces that strike a balance between providing narrative context and affording user interaction and exploration. It seems nevertheless feasible for metadata tagging and a "joined up" workflow to provide a basis for such rich interaction. After outlining relevant research from within and outside the heritage domain, we present our project, FINE (Fluid Interfaces for Narrative Exploration), an effort to develop such a system. Based on content from Wendy James' archive of anthropological research material from the Sudan/Ethiopian borderlands, the FINE project attempts to use structural and thematic metadata to drive exploratory interfaces which link video, images, audio, and text to relevant narrative units. The interfaces also benefit from the temporal and spatial variety of the collection to provide opportunities to discover contrasts and juxtaposition in the material across place and time. © 2012 ACM

Understanding Anthropological Understanding: for a merological anthropology

In this paper I argue for a merological anthropology in which ideas of ‘partiality’ and ‘practical adequacy’ provide a way out of the impasse of relativism which is implied by post-modernism and the related abandonment of a concern with ‘truth’. Ideas such as ‘aptness’ and ‘faithfulness’ enable us to re-establish empirical foundations without having to espouse a simple realism which has been rightly criticised. Ideas taken from ethnomethodology, particularly the way we bootstrap from ‘practical adequacy’ to ‘warrants for confidence’ point to a merological anthropology in which we recognize that we do not and cannot know everything, but that we can have reasons for being confident in the little we know

The Secret to Successful User Communities: An Analysis of Computer Associates’ User Groups

This paper provides the first large scale study that examines the impact of both individual- and group-specific factors on the benefits users obtain from their user communities. By empirically analysing 924 survey responses from individuals in 161 Computer Associates' user groups, this paper aims to identify the determinants of successful user communities. To measure success, the amount of time individual members save through having access to their user networks is used. As firms can significantly profit from successful user communities, this study proposes four key implications of the empirical results for the management of user communities

Big Data and Research Opportunities Using HRAF Databases

The HRAF databases, eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology, each containing large corpora of curated text subject-indexed at the paragraph-level by anthropologists, were designed to facilitate rapid retrieval of information. The texts describe social and cultural life in past and present societies around the world. As of the spring of 2017, eHRAF contains almost 3 million indexed “paragraph” units from over 8,000 documents describing over 400 societies and archaeological traditions. This chapter first discusses concrete problems of scale resulting from large numbers of complex elements retrieved by any given search. Second, we discuss potential and partial solutions that resolve these problems to advance research, whether based on specific hypotheses, classification or identifying and evaluating embedded patterns of relationships. Third, we discuss new kinds of research possibilities that can be further advanced, have not yet been successfully attempted, or have not even been considered using anthropological data because of scale and complexity of achieving a result

Untangling knowledge creation and knowledge integration in enterprise wikis

A central challenge organizations face is how to build, store, and maintain knowledge over time. Enterprise wikis are community-based knowledge systems situated in an organizational context. These systems have the potential to play an important role in managing knowledge within organizations, but the motivating factors that drive individuals to contribute their knowledge to these systems is not very well understood. We theorize that enterprise wiki initiatives require two separate and distinct types of knowledge-sharing behaviors to succeed: knowledge creation (KC) and knowledge integration (KI). We examine a Wiki initiative at a major German bank to untangle the motivating factors behind KC and KI. Our results suggest KC and KI are indeed two distinct behaviors, reconcile inconsistent findings from past studies on the role of motivational factors for knowledge sharing to establish shared electronic knowledge resources in organizations, and identify factors that can be leveraged to tilt behaviors in favor of KC or KI

The gift of the gab. Anthropology and conversation analysis

This paper discusses the fine-grain analysis of conversation and how conversational structure is related to larger issues of social organisation. Mauss's analysis of "the Gift" is related to "adjacency pairs" and the patterns of turn-taking that form conversational structure, particularly helping identification of conversational breakdown and subsequent repair. Social tensions cause problems in communication. Hence, the study of social actors keeping conversation flowing reveals social processes. Ethnographic examples are used from Mambila in Cameroon. The moral dimension to gift exchange can help us understand why dumb insolence is offensive. Failing to return a greeting is similar to the failure to return a gift. The exchange of words shows up the web of relationships that constitute the fabric of society

Finding meaning in the text: The process of interpretation in text-based divination

Some systems of divination are used to select particular sections of text, which are typically arcane and erudite, in which lies the answer to the particular, pressing problems of the client. Celebrated examples of such systems are the Chinese I Ching and the Yoruba Ifá. Werbner's work on Kalanga and Tswapong divination provides a case-study of the detailed praxis in such systems. Diviners have a multiple role when a divination technique selects a text. At each consultation they must satisfy themselves, their client, and their audience that they have followed the correct procedures to select the text. A second stage follows. The client has a particular question and the selected text was not composed as a specific answer to it. Interpretation is required to satisfy the client that the question has been answered. The diviner thus plays the role of indigenous critic, a role both similar to and different from that of literary critics in the Western tradition. The concept of 'dialogic' used by Barber in her analysis of Yoruba praise poetry is taken to illustrate similarities and differences between diviner and critic. © Royal Anthropological Institute 2001