Category: English
The payday loan crisis
My latest article for the Guardian is on the explosion of payday lending, which is a huge problem in Missouri and in the U.S. in general: I am…
Sign language as a window into universally accessible linguistic biases
A very interesting new article: “Event representations constrain the structure of language: Sign language as a window into universally accessible linguistic biases” by Brent Strickland, Carl…
Sebastian Junger’s The Last Patrol, A Dialogue
End of the freight tracks, Connellsville, PA. From left to right: Brendan O’Byrne, Guillermo Cervera, Sebastian Junger and Rudy Valdez. Photo by Mariah Rehmet, courtesy of HBO. War…
The Promising Predicament of the Keystone XL Pipeline
Stockpile of Keystone XL pipes near Buffalo, South Dakota. Photo by David Bond. Politics makes visible that which had no reason to be seen. —Jacques Rancière Whether ultimately…
April 2015
Volume 7 / Issue 1 / April 2015 This issue includes: Features Solidarity and Resistance on the Island of Llingua by Anton Daughters Sebastian Junger’s The Last Patrol:…
Identity and Meaning in Derby Hats
Last Saturday over 170,000 people descended on Churchill Downs for the 141st Kentucky Derby. The Derby is the first of three races that comprise the American Triple Crown…
The 2015 British election and the UK’s creeping constitutional crisis
In the late 90s I met the US ambassador in Paris. He asked what Tony Blair was going to do with the pound/euro issue. I said the question…
Jeffrey Sachs-The Strange Case of Dr Shock and Mr Aid (book review)
As the recent long interview of Jeffrey Sachs by Tyler Cowen confirmed, Sachs remains one of the most visible, discussed and engaging thinkers of international development. Japhy Wilson’s…
Open Access Articles from the American Anthropological Association
The AAA has decided to feature the “most-discussed” articles (as measured by Altmetrics) from Anthrosource by making them temporarily open-access. Among these are several articles that mi…
The Andijon Massacre: Ten years later
May 13, 2015 will mark the ten-year anniversary of the Andijon massacre: the day military troops in Uzbekistan shot and killed over 700 Uzbek citizens gathered at a…
Webinar Wednesday with Larissa Sandy: Sex Work in Cambodia
Hello anthropology enthusiasts! Our next webinar, with Larissa Sandy, will be the last scheduled before we take a break for the summer. In it we’ll be exploring the…
Beyond perception conference
The previous blog topic by Anna on humans and animals is very prominent in the programme of the upcoming super-interesting “Beyond Perception” conference at the University of Aberdeen,…
New research on International Development TED Talks & their role for communication for social change
Daniel Esser and I are very happy to share our latest research publication with you! TED Talks on International Development: Trans-Hegemonic Promise and Ritualistic Constraints is probably the…
Social media as hyper-visibility
Image courtesy of Kris A, Creative Commons After an intensive few months of hiding away finishing our books (and neglecting this blog), we have come back together…
Landmarks: a review
Christopher Tilley, Department of Anthropology, University College London (c.tilley@ucl.ac.uk) Robert Macfarlane Landmarks (2015) London: Hamish Hamilton, 387pp. £20.00 rrp This is the fifth bo…
All of one place: A Muslim saint, a converted Hindu princess, and a Hindu deity
A joint place of worship Just outside the Indian border town of Mahendraganj, at the top of a low hill, is a shrine (dargah) containing the graves of a…
Arguing for Alliances: Why Business and Religious Leaders Should Promote Migrant Health Care – Ryan I. Logan
Ryan I. Logan In June 2013, from a top-floor meeting room at the Indianapolis headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company, I witnessed an unusual alliance of…
Living it up in Lisbon: A “best of” by two residents
After nearly three years living in Lisbon, Gawain and I have racked up a pretty good knowledge of its sights, museums, eating places, and drinking dwellings. In fact,…
Arguing for Alliances: Why Business and Religious Leaders Should Promote Migrant Health Care – Ryan I. Logan
Ryan I. Logan In June 2013, from a top-floor meeting room at the Indianapolis headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company, I witnessed an unusual alliance of…
Aliens among us
Quite apart from the world building aspects of the genre, the presence of aliens provides readers and audience members with figures, indeed, whole populations, with which to …
Boredom as a practice
I was reading through my field notebooks lately and I came across a little ethnographic snippet of description. It is a description of a male French student sitting in a…
In Search of Soul and Soulful Social Science
Soul is about human connection. Soul is about deep feeling, about self-knowledge and empathy. As my Songhay friends in West Africa like to say, a soulful quality makes…