The Strange Power of Laughter
An anthropologist explores laughter as a far more complex phenomenon than simple delight—reflecting on its surprising power to disturb and disrupt. ✽ WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I tended…
Author: Kirsten Bell
Authorship in the post-academic, post-human age
In 1964, when describing the threshold for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio, the US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said that while he couldn’t define precisely what constituted…
The (il)logic of tipping
If I’m being honest, there are various occasions when I have not tipped. One time, after receiving appallingly bad service, I wrote on the receipt “please turn over…
The (il)logic of tipping
If I’m being honest, there are various occasions when I have not tipped. One time, after receiving appallingly bad service, I wrote on the receipt “please turn over…
Kelly Ray Knight’s addicted.pregnant.poor by Kirsten Bell
addicted.pregnant.poor By Kelly Ray Knight Duke University Press, 2015, 328 pages addicted.pregnant.poor is the sort of ethnography you start reading and don’t put down again until it’s finished. …