To Follow or Not; Paying Attention to the Ghomeshi Trial
I’ve been resisting following the Ghomeshi trial. Partly, I’m enabled by circumstance–a temporary fragility of anatomy with accompanying pain & analgesics have occupied me for th…
Category: English
Paper call: Engaging with treasures of the subsurface between extractivism and spiritualism, 20-23 July 2016
Dear colleagues at this year’s European Association for Social Anthropology congress in Milano, we got a session accepted on extractive industries where we want to go beyond the…
The Darkest Truths
In 2007, Caroline Sturdy Colls—then a 21-year-old University of Birmingham graduate student—made her first visit to the Nazi death camp at Treblinka, Poland. As a prospective forensic-archaeology scho…
Relevant Teaching for the 21st Century
Defending Anthropology 101 and the Mega-Class In February 2016, I was honored to participate in several sessions around the theme “Defending Anthropology 101 and the Mega-Class: Relevant Teachin…
Defending Anthropology 101 and the Mega-Class: Relevant Teaching for the 21st Century
On 4-5 February 2016, honored to participate in several sessions around the theme “Defending Anthropology 101 and the Mega-Class: Relevant Teaching for the 21st Century.” The idea of…
10 Trillion Gallons of Water Should Drown China’s Yangtze Gorges World Heritage Application
The Three Gorges Dam Main Wall, 2006. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons The Yangtze River begins in the Tibetan Plateau and flows eastward into the East China Sea at Shanghai. …
REDUX: Boredom and the “Life Unlived” – Sapiens-Allegra Writing Competition!
Most of our devoted Allies will remember that we started this year with a bang, aka by launching the SAPIENS-Allegra writing competition to discover new public anthropologists. For…
Infrastructure as Iron Cage
Weber’s metaphor of the iron cage is one of the most famous in all of sociology. It’s certainly stuck with me: I keep a bookmark in my copy…
Rina Sherman and the Ovahimba
Exhibit Review Rina Sherman and the head man standing at the entrance of the exhibit. Photo courtesy Rina Sherman Approach the exhibit hall of the Francois Mitterrand National…
Homo erectus: The Winnie-the-Pooh of Fossil Hominins?
A baby displays his eating prowess with only a few teeth. Holly Dunsworth Did you hear about the Homo erectus who lost all but one of his teeth?…
Diversions of Biomedical Technologies in a Globalized World — A special issue of Medical Anthropology by Aaron Seaman
The current issue of Medical Anthropology is a special issue, entitled “Diversions of Biomedical Technologies in a Globalized World.” As Claire Beaudevin & Laurent Pordié write in their…
Taking Risks in Teaching Anthropology, Part I
This is the first of a two-part blog post in which Suzanne Z. Gottschang from Smith College outlines the benefits of integrating a real-world assignment into her introductory…
Sara Shneiderman, “Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2015)
Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) by Sara Shneiderman is the first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, a Himalayan communi……
David Wright, “Understanding Cultural Taste Sensation, Skill and Sensibility,” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
What is cultural taste? How is it formed, imagined and patterned? In Understanding Cultural Taste Sensation, Skill and Sensibility (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), David Wright, Associate Professor at the… Visit New Books…
Tam Ngo and Justine B. Quijada, eds., “Atheist Secularism and its Discontents: A Study of Religion and Communism in Eurasia” (Palgrave, 2015)
Secularism has emerged as a central category of twenty-first century political thought and critical theory. Following the lead of anthropologist Talal Asad, there is a growing literature that…
Hospital Food
Guest Contributor: David Shane Lowry, Assistant Professor, Chicago Medical School and College of Health Professions I worked as a technician for five years (between 2007 and 2012) in…
Sara Shneiderman, “Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India”
Sara Shneiderman View on Amazon Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India (U Pennsylvania Press, 2015) by Sara Shneiderman is the first comprehensive ethnography of the…
Extractive Industries – mining anthropology positions
Colleagues from Belgium advertise the following posts. The orientation is not Arctic but African – and not less fascinating for sure! Five new positions opening at the Faculty…
Making Sense of Violence Against Minority Women: Notes on Skepticism, Discomfort & Privilege in #Fieldwork
What is it like to do fieldwork within a marginalized social group? Especially when you – the researcher – hail from the dominant community? How do you deal…
A refugee camp in the Netherlands as a public sphere
Bron: RTL Nieuws By Nynke van Dijck Some weeks ago there was a big storm in the Netherlands. ‘Code Orange’ was issued to tell people to be careful…
Chefs as activists–Daniel Giusti takes on America’s school lunches
Greg de St. Maurice Ryukoku University Chefs today wield a great deal of influence. They are (or are expected to be) simultaneously artisans, entrepreneurs, activists, and celebrities. In…