Rock Drawings
A Tohono O’odham poet and linguist reflects on the stories and wisdom ancestors communicated—how people survived, how they dispersed and differentiated, how they remember. “Rock Drawings” …
Category: English
Queer Space
In this episode of High Theory, Jack Jen Gieseking tells us about queer space. Queer geographies matter alongside queer temporalities. And it turns out that lesbian life in…
Maison Centrale de Saigon // General Sciences Library
Trying to read in the library but looking out the window at the reminder that this is no ordinary library experience. A few parts from a recent text:…
REMEMBERING MY MENTOR Professor Shyama Charan Dube (S.C. Dube)
Contributed By: Prof. R. K. Mutatkar Former Founder Head, Deptt. of Anthropology Director, Inter-disciplinary School of Health Sciences Savitribai Phule Pune University Maharashtra Email: rkmutatka…
Robin Bartram, “Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality” (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Though we rarely see them at work, building inspectors have the power to significantly shape our lives through their discretionary decisions. The building inspectors of Chicago are at…
This is what replaced Tenbun:「”Takoyaki/side dishes standing bar Peke x Peke”」
Tenbun closed on March 28, 2020. The space it occupied was empty for a year and a half. Then on October 10, 2021, a new shop opened, Peke…
Shailaja Paik, “The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India” (Stanford UP, 2022)
The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford UP, 2022) offers the first social and intellectual history of Dalit performance of Tamasha—a popular form of public,…
hypnotextiality syndrome
starting to see text everywhere, been editing other peoples work much.
Links & Contents I Liked 469
Hi all,This week’s not-so-good news from Lebanon, Ethiopia, North Korea & Syria found a positive counterpart with powerful, hopeful stories from women contributing to change-from Vanuatu, Sweden, Sout…
Myanmar Jewellers in China
China re-opened border in a final farewell to its strict zero-COVID policy on the 8th of January, 2023. But in the first few weeks of January, the Myanmar side…
Minoritarian Liberalism: A Travesti Life in a Brazilian Favela
While a graduate student in social anthropology, Moisés Lino e Silva’s curiosity about the scarcity of freedom and lack of liberty in Brazilian favelas led him to Rocinha,…
Seeking PhD theses for review!
Herbalist weighing spices. Photo: Katharina Graf Katharina Graf The Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition is seeking recent PhD theses in the anthropology of food and…
They eat our sweat
In They Eat Our Sweat, Daniel Agbiboa engages the road transport sector in Lagos, Nigeria, to reveal how corruption operates through a dialectical “double capture” of state and…
Batja Mesquita, “Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions” (Norton, 2022)
Today I talked to Batja Mesquita about her book Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions (Norton, 2022). To a degree sometimes not realized, we discuss emotions through the lens of what have…
Stephanie C. Kane, “Just One Rain Away: The Ethnography of River-City Flood Control” (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2022)
Not long ago it seemed flood control experts were close to mastering the unruly flows funnelling toward Hudson Bay and the Prairie city of Winnipeg. But as more…
To Decolonize, We Must End the World as We Know It
A contributor to a special series on decolonizing anthropology argues that true decolonization would require the complete dismantling of existing global power structures, including academic discipline…
Planting Seeds for a More Ethical Future
Three contributors to a special series reflect on why slowing down and building trust between community partners is fundamental to decolonizing anthropology—and our shared future. This contribution is…
Centering Black Lives in the Study of Human Remains
A contributor to a special series on decolonizing anthropology reckons with bioarchaeology’s racist past by focusing on Black women’s creativity and everyday lives in her work. This contribution…
Embracing the Poetry of Being Human
A contributor to a special series on decolonizing anthropology rejects the discipline’s colonial and racist roots and instead pursues ways of doing science that center human liberation and…
Can Anthropology Be Decolonized?
In recent years, anthropology has increasingly reckoned with its colonial and racist roots. In a special forum, scholars weigh in on what “decolonizing” means—and share their visions for…
Elizabeth Farfán-Santos, “Undocumented Motherhood: Conversations on Love, Trauma, and Border Crossing” (U Texas Press, 2022)
Claudia Garcia crossed the border because her toddler, Natalia, could not hear. Leaving behind everything she knew in Mexico, Claudia recounts the terror of migrating alone with her…
Gillian Tan, “Pastures of Change: Contemporary Adaptations and Transformations among Nomadic Pastoralists of Eastern Tibet” (Springer, 2018)
Tibetan nomads have developed a way of life that is dependent in multiple ways on their animals and shaped by the phenomenological experience of mobility. These pastoralists have…
Lois Presser, “Unsaid: Analyzing Harmful Silences” (U California Press, 2022)
Harm takes shape in and through what is suppressed, left out, or taken for granted. Unsaid: Unsaid: Analyzing Harmful Silences (U California Press, 2022) is a guide to understanding and uncovering…
Platypus in 2023
Welcome to Platypus in 2023! We’re excited for another year of anthropological and social thinking around science and technology. Last year we had over forty-five posts on topics…