The Problems of Evolution as a “March of Progress”
The idea that evolution is a hierarchy of complexity with humans on top lurks in everything from biology classes to politics. It’s time to unlearn this false and…
Category: English
Life Last Week
JFK’s coconut shell encased in plastic, via Wikimedia Commons After a bumpy election, James Marape returns for a second round as prime minister of PNG. I’m optimistic about…
Tomas Matza on his book, Shock Therapy
Interview by Natalja Czarnecki https://www.dukeupress.edu/shock-therapy Tomas Matza on his book, Natalja Czarnecki: In your ethnography of the popular “psychotherapeutic turn” in po…
Book Review: The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power by Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou
In The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power, Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou explore how digital technologies are shaping experiences of migration today, focusing particularly on the 2015…
Redressing Transgender Healthcare in the UK
KATERINA DOWNING University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT 12/05/2022 FAO: Cass Review Team NHS England PO Box 16738 Redditch B9…
William Matthews, “Cosmic Coherence: A Cognitive Anthropology Through Chinese Divination” (Berghahn Books, 2021)
Today I spoke to anthropologist William Mathews about his new book, Cosmic Coherence: A Cognitive Anthropology Through Chinese Divination (Berghahn Books, 2021). This book explores how humans are unique in their…
We All Love Roses
SAPIENS Poet-in-Residence Jason Vasser-Elong reflects on horrific cycles of violence—and highlights injustices that are often papered over. We All Love Roses – Listen Some say it’s human nature…
Redressing Payments for Clatsop and Tillamook Peoples’ Landclaims
The North coast of Oregon had several tribes of Native peoples, the Tillamook tribes and bands (Tillamook, Nehalem (Naalem), Nestucca, Nechesne) and the Clatsop tribe of Chinooks.…
Reflections on Novel Writing in Anthropology
Ethnographers have long struggled with the nebulous in-between spaces of science on the one hand, and story-telling on the other. It was what my frustrated seminar professor described…
REVIEW: Essays on A. L. Kroeber (1876–1960) and the Unnaming of Kroeber Hall
Editors’ note: The following review by Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt, the accomplished historian of anthropology and folklore, reflects on a collection of essays recently published about the 2020 decision b…
Valentina Napolitano & Kristin Norget: Pope Francis, Reconciliation, and the State
At the end of July, a remarkable event unfolded in three distinct but significant sites in Canada. Pope Francis, the Argentinian current supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic…
Links & Contents I Liked 450
Hi all,It’s this strange time of the year when my Swedish academic holidays are coming to an end while most of global academia looks at their calendar and…
An Open Letter to the American Obesity Foundation
VICTORIA ANTONIOU Dear Ms. Okon, I would like to begin this letter by acknowledging the hard work you and your organisation, The American Obesity Foundation (AOF), have been…
DFG Network at Heidelberg: Anthropology of China and Area Studies – Human and More-than-Human
Last November in Cologne , the DFG Network “Anthropology and China(s)” was launched. Back then we started our collective work on the first theme that we continued at…
Eviatar Zerubavel, “Generally Speaking: An Invitation to Concept-Driven Sociology” (Oxford UP, 2020)
Defying the conventional split between “theory” and “methodology,” Eviatar Zerubavel’s Generally Speaking: An Invitation to Concept-Driven Sociology (Oxford UP, 2020) introduces a yet unarticulated and thus far never systematised method…
Did Neanderthals Make Art?
Experts continue to debate whether Neanderthals were painters and jewelry-makers. A paleoanthropologist explores the evidence for Neanderthal art and the sources of people’s skepticism. ✽ As a Neande…
How a Coerced Confession Shaped a Family History
A researcher delves into her family’s oral history and local archives to tell the story of a relative—falsely accused as a boy of a crime in Jim Crow–era…
Minh-Ha T. Pham, “Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Social Media’s Influence on Fashion, Ethics, and Property” (Duke UP, 2022)
In 2016, social media users in Thailand called out the Paris-based luxury fashion house Balenciaga for copying the popular Thai “rainbow bag,” using Balenciaga’s hashtags to circulate memes…
Anastasia Shesterinina, “Mobilizing in Uncertainty: Collective Identities and War in Abkhazia” (Cornell UP, 2021)
Anastasia Shesterinina begins Mobilizing in Uncertainty: Collective Identities and War in Abkhazia (Cornell University Press, 2021) with an account of Georgian troops crossing into eastern Abkhazia, in the Southern Caucasus region…
David R. Stroup, “Pure and True: The Everyday Politics of Ethnicity for China’s Hui Muslims” (U Washington Press, 2022)
Compared to their Uyghur and Kazakh co-religionists in Xinjiang, China’s largest single Muslim group – the Hui – has received less media and scholarly attention lately, perhaps understandably…
Wisdom From the Winding Path
An anthropologist dreams of his work with Songhay sorcerers in Niger and of French poet Edmond Jabès, fictionalizing conversations and experiences to polish nuggets of wisdom for our…
Platypod, Episode Two: Ableism in Anthropology and Higher Ed
In this episode, Platypod presents a conversation between Laura Heath-Stout (Brandeis University) and Rebecca-Eli Long (Purdue University). They discuss their research and experiences of ableism in ac…
Time to register for NAFA 2022 (Sept 7-11)
The 41st NAFA International Ethnographic Film Festival is soon upon us and will take place, physically, in Romania, in the tiny village of Csehétfalva / Cehețel in Harghita…
We are probably all black centipedes at heart
Dream note: I have to arrange my own boat, a massive crustacean-covered barge rowed with huge crab/octopus like mechanical oars and a front that folds over with a…