In England and Wales, a multiyear investigation has uncovered decades of pervasive child sexual abuse in schools, churches, and other institutions. An anthropologist on the project weighs in…
In Melanesia, Indigenous communities developed elaborate rituals to bring themselves material wealth starting in the late 19th century. These practices reveal a profoundly important and universal soci…
Researchers in artificial intelligence have made extraordinary strides in mimicking human language—but they still can’t capture the parts that truly make language human. ✽ The story begins with…
An anthropologist who migrated from India to the U.K. uses his research to illustrate how fellow migrants from India maintain cultural heritage through hard-to-find ingredients. ✽ Before I…
Cultural anthropologists seek to understand the dizzyingly diverse ways people live today, including how they think, act, create, struggle, make meaning, and organize their societies. WHAT IS CULTURAL…
The debate over naming the virus known as monkeypox says a lot about the close—but fraught—relationships between humans and our fellow primates. ✽ The name of the latest…
From Syria to Ukraine, the sight of women taking up arms to fight for a cause calls audiences to attention. Why? ✽ In 2019, the video game Call…
In a new book, Minoritarian Liberalism, an anthropologist explores how favela residents of Rio de Janeiro create their own versions of liberty—even under conditions of violence, poverty, and…
What do Twitter debates over Disney-Pixar’s recent family film tell us about today’s parenting politics in the U.S.? ✽ On June 17, Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation…
SAPIENS’ poetry editor and inaugural poet-in-residence break down what makes certain poems anthropological and explore how poetry has the potential to transform ways of thinking and being in…
The popular image of the U.S. heartland as only a place of rural, hardworking white farmers has always been a larger-than-life myth. In a new book, Imagining the…
An anthropologist traces the origins and world travels of one of his favorite kinds of plants. ✽ As someone who grew up in the Philippines, I have always…
For deaf people in the U.S., accessibility has become synonymous with provisioning professional sign language interpreters. But in everyday life, deaf people’s experiences of “access” often include mo…
A researcher delves into her family’s oral history and local archives to tell the story of a relative—falsely accused as a boy of a crime in Jim Crow–era…
People protest anti-Asian hate crimes on April 4 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, incidents of harassment, discrimination, and violen…