Category Archives: STU Anthropology Alumni

Dust-up in the Faroes

Anthropology in the News, Issues in Anthropology, STU Anthropology Alumni

STU anthropology alumnus Josh Green, currently undertaking his MA fieldwork in the Faroe Islands, is attracting some attention from Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (the folks who confront Japanese industrial whalers in the Great Southern Ocean). An essay that Josh wrote on anti-whaling protests in the Faroes has generated an interesting Facebook discussion (same paper as above, so scroll down to the comments), with Watson himself weighing in. Sadly, Mr. Watson seems to be reluctant to actually read the essay in question. Oh well…

This seems to be an example of what I have come to think of as “the conflict of leftist causes,” whereby people on the political left (and I am one of them) can get themselves tied into knots when one cause to be supported or celebrated conflicts with another…like opposing whaling, on the one hand, and supporting traditional cultures on the other. Let’s not forget, though, that environmentalism, human rights, and many other important causes are, nevertheless, mainstream Western constructs, and the imposition of those constructs on other peoples may indeed be usefully thought of through the framework of cultural imperialism.

You pick your poison. A blanket ban on, say, the hunting of marine turtles would put in jeopardy traditional Yolngu subsistence practices (which include species management practices anyway). At any rate, what Mr. Watson may be overlooking are the differences between large-scale, industrial, “scientific” whaling by Japan, and relatively small-scale, traditional whaling in the Faroes. What is the appropriate balance between environmentalism, animals rights, and cultural survival?

 

STU anthropology alumnus blogs from fieldwork

STU Anthropology Alumni

Joshua Green, formerly an honours student in anthropology here at STU and now an MA student in anthropology at the University of Alberta, is currently conducting fieldwork for his MA thesis in the Faroe Islands. And he’s blogging about it! Check out his blog, “A Canadian in the Faroes,” at the following URL:

http://thefaroes.blogspot.com/

Josh did an honors thesis here at STU on concepts of tradition, authenticity, and cultural production at the Miramichi Folksong Festival (http://www.miramichifolksongfestival.com), based on fieldwork and archival research.

His current MA thesis examines similar issues pertaining to Faroese folk music, particularly the ways in which old Faroese folksongs are incorporated into contemporary Faroese popular music. An example is the Faroese Folk metal band Týr (http://www.tyr.fo).

Josh has been posting mostly photographs taken during his fieldwork. But check out some of his earliest posts to find two excellent research papers that he wrote about the Faroes, one of them presented at the 2011 Canadian Anthropology Society conference, hosted here at STU in May and co-organized by STU’s own Dr. Craig Proulx.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Josh was not the only scholar of folk metal at the recent conference of the International Council for Traditional Music, hosted at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Growing field!