![]() ![]() Given further the richness that our fieldwork data accompanies us with, especially we as anthropologists really have few excuses for falling short of simply being riveting! This all seems incomprehensible given that, in principle at least, as academics we should be able to do pretty much whatever we want when presenting papers: we are able to choose our own way of organizing ourselves, and we all know that experimenting with photos, videos, even music has become not only accepted, but almost expected from us. Why don’t we respect all of these investments, both material and intellectual and simply – try and do a bit better? Why is it that we seem so willing to settle with boredom at conferences both as intellectual mediocrity and as inability to engage our listeners with our presentations? Why do we continue to attend conferences if it only means novel encounters with annoyingly familiar frustrations? Why do we ourselves (gulp!) fall guilty of being boring when we know that we could and SHOULD be so much more compelling?Īfter all, academic time at conferences is expensive, literally: people invest significant time just to be present, not to even mention the actual monetary expenses involved in travel costs. The obedient flock then follows the organizers at their invitation to share coffee and pastries next to the seminar venue, and all dive into lively discussion as if in an attempt to annul the trauma caused by the shared feeling of being held hostage by boredom. When the paper finally comes to a close, as if guarded against letting out the shared sigh of relief hovering in the air, everyone hurries to offer the presentation their seal of approve through weak applause. Soon I am persuaded that not even the presenter herself is paying attention to the content of her presentation – or if she was, we in the audience would never know as the monotony of her voice comes forth as utter detachment from the content of her narrative. Sadly, I soon realize that I am failing as I start to become overwhelmed by the collective sense of intellectual inertia overtaking the room. However, I am soon in for a rude awakening as bitter disappointment sets in along with an all too familiar conference accompaniment – boredom.Īs the presenter in the front continues her infinite cavalcade of power point slides, I struggle to keep my attention awake. Allured by both the captivating title of the conference, its prestigious venue and a cutting-edge, even sexy sounding abstract, I have prepared my spirits for a journey into the exciting, even the unknown. It is yet another day at some random conference or other, with yet another speaker being welcomed to the fore. Toward the Anthropology of Boredom – REDUX We want to challenge this and invite you to re-think this issue – and as a special bonus to wrap up this week’s retreat, we are adding a bit of something new to the end, namely a postscript titled ‘Boredom in Action at the UN’. Since publishing it for the first time, we have continued talking to people of this theme, and almost without failure encountered a uniform response: people burst at first into spontaneous, slightly incredulous laughter, then take a meditative pause and say “yeah, you might be onto something!” On our part we are more convinced of that than ever! Not only are we encountering alarming degrees of boredom in both academic contexts and field sites around us, but also a widespread tacit acceptance of this condition as something to be expected. It's another moment for the "only in the CFL" file, and one that will be remembered for a long while.To conclude the first ever ‘Allegra Virtual Retreat of Slow Food for Thought’ (AVRoSFfT) we are recycling a post of which we are particularly fond: Toward the Anthropology of Boredom. In fact, some (like Cam Cole, Terry Jones and Damian Cox) are already painting this as the story of the weekend, and it just might be if Sunday's Grey Cup doesn't turn out to be a memorable one. It's not every day you see 70-plus-year-old guys fighting, especially over something that happened in 1963 (by the way, you can find some video of the controversial Mosca hit on Willie Fleming that supposedly started this grudge here at 0:26, via acmesalesrep). Regardless of who started it, this story is hilarious. "Joe Kapp goes, 'What?' pops him twice and (Mosca) goes over on the chair, loses his 300-pound balance, goes through the curtain and disappears off the stage." "Joe Kapp gets up and goes to get some flowers (to give to Mosca) and Angie says, 'Shove it up your ass' … (Kapp) popped him twice and as he's going down, Angelo has the cane and hits Joe Kapp in the head. "Angelo said, 'Joe hasn't looked my way once,'" Jake relayed on air.
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