I discovered these two books reviews yesterday: one in Norwegian (Norwegian) by the student magazine at our institute, and this one (English) at a pretty good anthropology website. Although they write in rather different ways, they both focus on the fact that I was very much engaged in the world of my informants in Douglas and the latter specifically critisizes the fact that I concluded with what I thought needed to be done.
Now I do agree that their criticism is valid, as far as we are speaking of liberal academic practice. This is what we today know as being the practice in “academia” and it is what gets you high grades: self-censor yourself to say absolutely nothing while showing how many books you have read so far.
This contrasts highly with the ideals I am trying to follow: For a Marxist (and I am excluding the academizised version of it for now) the point of conducting and research or study is precisely to be better skilled to change the circumstances under whih people exist and suffer.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. (Marx 1845 Theses on Feurbach: II, VII, XI)
and for a radical such changes will with necessity be huge and, uhm well, radical… 🙂
Hm. Med fare for å bidra til å polere egoet ditt ytterligere: wow!!!!! Ganske fascinerende.
Fikk forresten klørne i den listepresentasjonsavisa fra UiO, enig i at Venstrealliansens sider var kjempebra! Så gjennomført, med Klassekampen og alt. Lykke til i valget!
Ellers takk for sist, artig å se deg på Landstinget.
Jaja, jeg skrev nå på norsk jeg, når man nå en gang har en nasjonalitet.. 🙂
Snakkes!
Anne
(Anne is a student in Bergen and we met both the last two weekends at two unrelated student political conferences in Bergen and Tromsø by mere coincidence. Now she’s surprised to find this webpage.)
Hi, Anne, I made this site precisely in order to try to unite all the different pictures of Johanneses people have out there. I was getting frustrated about having so many different personalities that were all depending on different contexts, languages, etc., so by writing in this blog, I have to force myself to write in a way that sort of speaks to all the different audiences at the same time… and remember: janteloven is not a global phenomenon; for some people in other parts of the world, this "self celebrating presentation" seems rather modest. Its all about finding the balance where one can speak to everybody.