Anthropology’s Seen and Unseen
In 1866, Alfred Russel Wallace sent a breathless letter to his friend and colleague, Thomas Huxley, inviting Huxley to join him in exploring a “new branch of anthropology”:…
Author: Samuel Gerald Collins
Science Fiction’s Emergent Anthropologies. SF Beyond Anthropological Science Fiction
My contribution to a really interesting issue on science fiction and the future in Rivista di antropologia contemporanea (2023). Abtsract: Science fiction and anthropology are separate projects,…
SETI: Signs in space/ Enacting space
[From the SETI project, “A Sign in Space” (https://asignin.space/)] “To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world — in order to set up a shadow world of…
Agan, the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics
Here’s a recent conference abstract submission, prompted in large part by Geoghegan’s 2022 “Code: From Information Theory to French Theory” (Duke, 2023). The characteristics of our digital world—algo…
Book Review: Played Out – Difference and Repetition in Classic Board Games
I published this review with “TheGeekAnthropologist” – such an interesting, important blog! Please click on the link to see the review in its entirety. Book Review: Played Out…
20th Anniversary of HBO’s "The Wire"
In 2011, we started a project entitled “Anthropology By the Wire” with participants drawn mainly from community colleges in the Baltimore area. Our goal was to collaborate with…
Ghostly Encounters on Google: Spirit Photography, Reverse Image Search and Urban Critique in Baltimore
In 1866, Alfred Russell Wallace proclaimed a “new branch of anthropology” premised on the Spiritualist movement that was then exploding in popularity in England. For Wallace, that anthropology…
A piece for Anthropology Day
Margaret Mead Imagined Different Futures By Samuel Gerald Collins In the face of climate disaster, a continuing pandemic, and endless global conflict, it’s difficult to be optimistic about…
Margaret Mead Imagined Different Futures
Anthropologist Margaret Mead (center), actor Robert Redford (left), and historian Lola Van Wagenen (right) attend “A Future With Alternatives,” a symposium held in 1978 in New York City.…
Where’s #Anthropology? Hashtag mayhem at #AAA2021Baltimore
The American Anthropological Annual Meeting has come and gone after a year hiatus. But, courtesy of the continued pandemic, it was not business as usual, and a combination…
Anthropology and the Twitter Challenge
For many of us in anthropology, the advent of “big data” represents a threat. Why, after all, spend months developing rapport and interviewing 100 people when you can…
Abstract for a paper-in-progress: quarantine and sentiment analysis.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: sentiment analyses of new connections and communities in a COVID world. Quarantine re-makes the city around u…
Review of The Anthropology of the Future, by Rebecca Bryant and Daniel M. Knight
Just published, and not behind a paywall. You can find it here, in the Spring 2020 issue of Anthropological Quarterly. Update – now it is! Uggh – what…
The Impoverishment of the COVID Future
From Wikimedia Commons As I complete this essay, the quarantine imposed on Baltimore stretches into its second month, and I continue teaching online amid terror and despair.&nbs…
Networked, Not Virtual: ethnography when you can’t go there
(from our storymap) In my capacity as a fellow in our faculty research center, I’ve been doing a lot of support work for the unexpected shift to learning-at-a-distance. …
The Future of Social Media in Anthropology
From the conclusion to my contribution on “Social Media” in Wiley’s “The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology:” Anthropologists are still coming to terms with social media and its impact…
Review of Readymade Bodhisattva: The Kaya Anthology of South Korean Science Fiction,
My review of the tremendously exciting collection of translated South Korean science fiction: Readymade Bodhisattva. It’s the first of its kind in English, and serves as a tremendous…
Futures at AAACASCA 2019
The American Anthropological Association/ Canadian Anthropological Society meeting in Vancouver is in November, but the browsable schedule is already out. As in previous years, I have identified…
AAA Paper Abstract: The Weight of Absence: Anthropologies of Non-Connection
(A day’s worth of geolocated instagram posts in Baltimore: August 24, 2018) The digital world presupposes a binary logic of connection and disconnection, one that decomposes into haves…
Work Out of Joint: Our Future Lives With Robots and Intelligent Agents
Wired magazine – mostly hagiographies of silicon valley entrepreneurs – capitalist porn – vague reassurances for the future from the uber-wealthy. 500 dollar headphones. The Senior Associa…
Speculative Anthropology Series in Cultural Anthropology
Please check out this provocative collection of papers at cultural anthropology. Edited by Ryan Anderson, Emma Louise Backe, Taylor Nelms, Elizabeth Reddy and Jeremy Trombley (and including my…
Twitter Wrap-up for AmAnth2018: Hashtags and Hautalk
As I have done over the past few years (2017, 2016), I returned from AAA2018 and ran some Twitter analytics. Here’s the sociograph I came up with (click…