Ed Bruner: In Memoriam
August 8, 2020 Ed Bruner at his home in Illinois (2005) Ed Bruner passed away yesterday, at 95–peacefully, at home. I wish my daughter and I could have…
Author: Alma Gottlieb
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID-19, Part 4: A Conversation with Physician-Anthropologist, Dr. Bjørn Westgard
Recently, I checked in with Dr. Bjørn Westgard, to see how he was doing. Back in the ‘90s, Bjørn was enrolled in a wildly demanding, combined M.D./Ph.D. program…
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID-19, Part 4: A Conversation with Physician-Anthropologist, Dr. Bjørn Westgard
Recently, I checked in with Dr. Bjørn Westgard, to see how he was doing. Back in the ‘90s, Bjørn was enrolled in a wildly demanding, combined M.D./Ph.D. program…
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID, Part 3: A Few Thoughts about Culture, and What We Can Learn from Artists . . . and the Homeless
What is “culture”? Early generations of anthropologists offered all sorts of definitions. No matter what their specifics, the various definitions inevitably shared one feature: “…
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID-19, Part 2: An Optimist’s Scenario
Here’s what I imagine could–and should–emerge from this viral nightmare. Locally, stranger-neighbors will (re)discover each other. Re-appreciate the bonds of co-residence. …
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID-19
Lesson 1: Like the ducks and brants my husband and I see congregating regularly by the dozens along the shore’s edge of Narraganssett Bay near our coastal home,…
Writing about Coffee
Despite being a lifelong non-coffee-drinker, I somehow found myself reading two fantastic books about coffee recently. The first, Miriam Sagan’s A Hundred Cups of Coffee, hijacked me from…
The Blueberry Wars
In elementary school, the first “robin red-breast” of spring signaled warmer days, colorful flowers, and a promise that the school year wouldn’t last forever. I considered robins m…
Goose Lessons
What can an anthropologist (who specializes in humans) learn from an unlikely species (like a goose)? Plenty, it turns out. My husband and I went goose-banding the other day,…
Birth as Ritual/Ritual as Birth
Cultural anthropologist, Robbie Davis-Floyd, is considered by many as the Queen of Childbirth Studies. A Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of…
When Women’s Laughter Keeps Men in Line
Among the Mbendjele gathering-hunting people who live in the Republic of Congo, “women’s laughter manages to keep men in line.” Drawing from ethnographic research by Jerome Lewis, anthropo…
Environmental Anthropology: An Anthropologist’s View of a Cove Cleanup
The curse of the anthropologist: finding culture everywhere in nature. Today, the neighborhood in which my husband and I now live hosted a cleanup in a nearby cove.…
Doing Development the Right Way: A Conversation with Charles Piot
Anthropologist Charlie Piot has been conducting research on the political economy and history of rural West Africa for over thirty years. His first book, Remotely Global: Village Modernity…
Humanity’s Surprising Variety of Approaches to Toilet Training
[no-caption] David D/Flickr This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. Are 2-year-olds too young to start toilet training? …
The Anthropology/Poetry Nexus–An Interview with Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor
Can artists and social scientists inhabit the same universe? Melisa (“Misha”) Cahnmann-Taylor embodies that nexus. Her advanced degrees include an MFA in poetry . . . and a…
Everything You Thought You Knew about Orphans in Africa Is Probably Wrong
Policy makers, development workers, orphanage voluntourists, missionaries, prospective adoptive parents: ignore this book at your peril. “AIDS orphans” are commonly imagined as the…
Of Diapers, Potties and Split Pants
Understanding Toilet Training around the World May Help Parents Relax I recently published a piece on The Conversation about toilet training in a global context. You can read the…
A Tale of Two (Ad) Campaigns
For a while, the mega-global corporation, Unilever — owner of Dove beauty products — spoke thoughtfully to the world’s women. The 13-year-long “Real Beauty” campaign that…
What a Brown Recluse Spider Has Taught Me
After having recently received a venomous bite by a brown recluse spider in NYC, I’ve spent some time researching my arachnid attacker and discovering how to recover from the…
Do All African Immigrants Arrive Sick, Desperate, and Empty-Handed on the Shores of Europe? Ask Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg!
The lives, status, and image of immigrants may constitute the single-most urgent human issue of our time. In an arresting and captivating new study of Cameroonian mothers now…
Is History Over? How Can Power be Soft? Ask Ulf Hannerz
The end of history The clash of civilizations The coming anarchy Soft power We’ve all heard these trendy mottos, and most of us have probably cringed. Anthropologists…
Interview with Perry Gilmore about “Kisisi (Our Language): The Story of Colin and Sadiki”
Kisisi (Our Language): The Story of Colin and Sadiki chronicles a charming and, indeed, remarkable friendship that developed between two five-year-old boys—one (Sadiki), the son of a traditionally…