Mala Beads
Author: Richard Fraser Mala Beads Of the nearly 7 million ethnic Tibetans living in China today, approximately 4 million live outside the Tibet Autonomous Region. Nearly 2 million…
Category: English
Book Review: Janelle Lamoreaux’s Infertile Environments
Infertile Environments: Epigenetic Toxicology and the Reproductive Health of Chinese Men, by Janelle Lamoreaux (Duke University Press, 2023). The World Health Organization recently called to cente…
Vera Lazzaretti and Kathinka Frøystad, “Beyond Courtrooms and Street Violence: Rethinking Religious Offence and Its Containment” (Routledge, 2022)
Drawing on the extensive empirical field research of six scholars of religion and politics, Vera Lazzaretti and Kathinka Frøystad’s Beyond Courtrooms and Street Violence: Rethinking Religious Offence and Its…
Darnise C. Martin, “Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church” (NYU Press, 2005)
Darnise C. Martin’s Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church (NYU Press, 2005) draws on rich ethnographic work in a Religious Science church in Oakland, California, to illuminate…
Tulasi Srinivas, “Wonder in South Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, Ethics” (SUNY Press, 2023)
Tulasi Srinivas’ edited volume Wonder in South Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, Ethics (SUNY Press, 2023) brings together historians and ethnographers of South Asia, including leading and emerging scholars, to consider the…
Eva van Roekel, “Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina” (Rutgers UP, 2020)
In Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina (Rutgers University Press, 2020), Eva van Roekel grounds her research in phenomenological anthropology and the anthropology of emotion to offer…
Tulasi Srinivas, “Wonder in South Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, Ethics” (SUNY Press, 2023)
Tulasi Srinivas’ edited volume Wonder in South Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, Ethics (SUNY Press, 2023) brings together historians and ethnographers of South Asia, including leading and emerging scholars, to consider the…
Thomas DeGloma, “Anonymous: The Performance of Hidden Identities” (U Chicago Press, 2023)
In recent years, anonymity has rocked the political and social landscape. There are countless examples: An anonymous whistleblower was at the heart of President Trump’s first impeachment, an…
What Is “Natural” for Human Sexual Relationships?
A biological and anthropological researcher explains how humans’ diverse ways of mating might have evolved. ✽ Marrying more than one person constitutes a crime across most of the…
SAR Receives $900,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is honored to announce that it has been awarded a grant in the amount of $900,000 from the National Endowment for the…
Dismantling the “Man the Hunter” Myth
Two biological anthropologists analyze archaeological and physiological evidence to debunk enduring assumptions about the gendered division of labor in ancient times. This article was originally publ…
Luft aus anderen planeten
Stefan George Ich fühle luft von anderem planeten.Mir blassen durch das dunkel die gesichterDie freundlich eben noch sich zu mir drehten. Und bäum und wege die ich liebte…
Fault Lines: Curator Q&A with Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu
Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu (Kanaka ʻOiwi/Native Hawaiian) is a fifteen-year veteran of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, where she developed scores…
This Militarization
A poet-anthropologist conveys her life when she was coming of age under the increasing mobilization of military forces in Indian-occupied Kashmir. If you missed the introduction to “This…
Documenting the Kashmir Conflict Through Poetry
SAPIENS’ 2023 poet-in-residence sketches the history she speaks to in three poems from Indian-occupied Kashmir. “Speak up for your lips are not sealed, and your words are still…
"It’s just a joke": Why We Need to Pay Attention to Far-Right Humour
There is a growing industry of far-right comedy. What role does humour play in the mainstreaming and normalisation of the far right?
E. Gabriel Dattatreyan on his book, The Globally Familiar
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-globally-familiar Eléonore Rimbault: Much of the energy of The Globally Familiar derives from your candid and involved focus on the young b-boys and rappers …
Rita Kesselring, “Bodies of Truth: Law, Memory, and Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa” (Stanford UP, 2017)
Rita Kesselring’s important book Bodies of Truth: Law, Memory, and Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Stanford University Press, 2017) seeks to understand the embodied and everyday effects of…
My 2023 Reading List
2023 was, iirc, the second year I’ve set the goal of reading a book a week — and this year I managed to do it again! It was…
Settler, Settler Colonialism, and the Indigenous
As bombs descend on Gaza and the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) slowly infiltrates the urban spaces of Gaza protesters around the world have taken to the streets. Pro-Israeli…
Jayaseelan Raj, “Plantation Crisis: Ruptures of Dalit life in the Indian Tea Belt” (UCL Press, 2022)
What does the collapse of India’s tea industry mean for Dalit workers who have lived, worked and died on the plantations since the colonial era? Plantation Crisis: Ruptures of…
Matthew O. Jackson, “The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors” (Vintage, 2019)
Social networks existed and shaped our lives long before Silicon Valley startups made them virtual. For over two decades economist Matthew O. Jackson, a professor at Stanford University, has studied…
2024: A Look Ahead
New Year’s festivities inevitably include reviews of the year that’s …