Baobab: Anthropological Fieldwork, Science, Dr. Andy Weil's Integrative Medicine Website, & Global University, in Africa

Anthropology and Science

Anthropological fieldwork - participant observation - is the basis of sociocultural anthropology, which is a social scientific, interpretive practice that engages the same traditions of reason that 'hard' science does. Ethnographic writing here is both a practice and a genre. See for example Allaine Cerwonka and Liisa Malkki's "Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork" (Univ of Chicago 2007). I'll try to post the "Oxford Companion to Philosophy's" short entry on science, in a week or so.

Dr. Andy Weil's Integrative Medicine Web Site

I find Andy Weil MD's web site's search field - drweil.com - particularly helpful vis-a-vis western and alternative medicine. Weil is a Harvard-trained botanist (BA) and medical doctor who offers both allopathic (western medicine) analyses of specific medical conditions, and evidence-oriented integrative and complementary possibilities, drawing on clinical research. He also engages a far-reaching network of skillful and knowledgeable, alternative, healing practitioners, his own analyses, and is a skillful communicator.

Dr. Andy Weil's alternative medicine web site is a fascinating combination of allopathic medicine and integrative/complementary medicine - accessible through the Internet - as well as an important site for medical anthropology vis-a-vis the World Wide Web.


Global University, in Africa

Why not create a U.S. $10 solar, video-capable, iPhone-like device, in conjunction with One Laptop Per Child, to distribute easily in Africa, for example, in the Congo, so that peoples there might start to teach and learn courses vis-a-vis Global University's Wiki, in Agriculture, Business, Computer Science, English, and in Kikongo, Lingala, Tshiluba, Swahili, French and English languages (of the estimated 242 languages of the Congo)?

With this Global University Wiki, local teachers could use such devices to teach one-to-many wherever Internet access is available, in conjunction, to start, with the most competent University there, and to record courses directly to the World Wide Web.