Navigating Silicon Valley’s Contradictions
Silicon Valley’s workers must maneuver their way through this place of diversity and discrimination, capitalist aims, and countercultural aspirations. You can spot the extremes on the street in…
Author: Alexandra Frankel
Roxana Wales
Roxana Wales, recently retired, is a respected corporate ethnographer and research scientist. She was one of the first anthropologists to begin working on corporate ethnographic projects and she…
HHS Transgender Proposal a Shabby Costume
Implementing the Department of Health and Human Services’ proposed definition of sex as “either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born…
What Can Witchcraft Do in Mexico?
Although it rarely results in accusations, violence, or exclusion, witchcraft has implications for relations of power and authority in Mexican Catholicism. In late September 2017, in the quiet…
Brazil’s National Museum Fire
On September 2, a hot Sunday in Central Brazil, I saw the incredible images of an enormous fire rapidly consuming the National Museum of Brazil—a building that is…
What Can Fossils Tell Us about Early Human Diets?
We may never know the intricate details of early human diets—and sometimes, different lines of evidence can seem contradictory. Happy National Fossil Day! Fossils are among the most…
White Patriarchy Gets a Pacifier
In the era of #MeToo, we need collective liberation, not the tears and tantrums of white male entitlement. In less than the time it takes you to read…
Raising Health Expectations for Schizophrenia Patients
People living with chronic illness and medication also manage their health in experimental and often quite ordinary ways. Blood tests, echocardiograms, waist measurements, and body weigh-ins comprise…
Non-Modern Humans Were More Complex—and Artistic—Than We Thought
Fossil and archaeological evidence suggests that our ancient relatives found innovative ways to make and share meaning. A recent exhibit at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas,…
Where Do We Come From?
The idea that a single population was the ancestor of all living humans is neat and convenient, but it is not consistent with the data. The origin of…
Picking a Bone with Evolutionary Essentialism
There is more to our evolutionary history than a single origin in Africa. In the past year, at least four fossil finds have been billed as overturning the…
Through Dappled Light
Homo naledi hints at the wonders of what we have yet to learn about human evolution. A common teaching analogy in paleoanthropology is that of the drunk looking…
Great Ape Haters
Isaiah Nengo on racist tweets, evolutionary misconceptions, and his ancient ape skull discovery. In a tweet from 2013, Roseanne Barr called former United Nations National Security Advisor Susan…
Call for 2019 Opinion Columnists!
What do you want to see in AN? Have you been wishing for a column that probes the anthropology of climate change or stand-up comedy or the tech…
Call for Proposals: From 1969 to 2019
1969—Stonewall, British troops sent to Northern Ireland, Equal Employment Opportunity, Biafra, Woodstock, Shirley Chisholm becomes the first Black congresswoman, the Apollo 11 moon landing, combat dea…
Fifty Years of Refuge in the Gaza Camp
This article is part of the Maintaining Refuge series. For stateless Palestinian refugees in Jordan, ordinary life can be an extraordinary accomplishment. The Gaza Camp (mukhayyam Gaza) is…
Australia’s Values-Based Asylum Activism
This article is part of the Maintaining Refuge series. Part one of the series can be found on AnthroSource. Activist appeals to moral and national ideals hold lessons…
Communicating in Times of Crisis
What anthropologists can do to support asylum seekers and the interpreters who serve them. It started with people tagging me on Facebook during the first few days of…
Dancing with the Spirits
In a present colored by forces of globalization and the Anthropocene, Masewal dancers reconnect with their spiritual landscape to visualize alternative futures. Mexico today is gripped by a…
Biocommensurations
Psychiatry is in crisis because it failed to integrate symptom classifications with biomarkers. Its future depends on finding new ways of bringing disparate insights together. Any kind of…
What’s in Your Bag, Anthropologists?
From the Andean highlands to Appalachia, anthropologists from across the discipline open their field bags to reveal favorite pens, recording equipment, emergency granola bars, and—of course—scarves. W…
Ambivalent Spaces in the (Neo)Liberal Arts
How do we respond to the pressure to become responsibilized faculty members in today’s market-driven college context? What is the future of anthropology at liberal arts colleges in…
Inside the Annual Meeting Scheduling Process
The American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) 2018 Annual Meeting in San José is on the horizon, and we couldn’t be more excited for the dynamic and diverse collection of…
Written in Blood
How my research on DNA ancestry tests became fake news. When I was sent a link to a Snopes article asking, “Did DNA Testing Companies Admit to Altering…