With Pierre Loti in Persia
My friend, the historian G. Rex Smith, has recently translated into English a marvelous travel diary by the French military official and traveller Pierre Loti (1850-1923). It is…
Category: English
Jonathan Parry: The Burdens of the Past: Comments on David Graeber’s Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar
Image 1: Book cover of Lost People David Graeber’s Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar began life as his University of Chicago doctoral thesis.…
The Age of Digital Divination
Divination rituals around the world often include animals, as seen in this early 20th-century painting of fortunetelling using a chicken by Russian artist Konstantin Makovsky. Brandmeister/Wi…
Jisha Menon, “Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in the Indian City” (Northwestern UP, 2021)
Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in the Indian City (Northwestern UP, 2021) follows a postcolonial city as it transforms into a bustling global metropolis after the liberalization of ……
Confronting Legacies of Toxic Goodness: Speculative Reflections from the 4S 2021 Annual Meeting
This piece was originally posted on November 24, 2021 on the EnviroSociety blog here. To cite, please use the following: Caporusso, Jessica, Duygu Kaşdoğan, and Katie Ulrich. 2021.…
Issh2021 Conference programme walkthrough
A ten-minute walkthrough of the conference programme for the Dec 17-18 ISSH2021, the international conference Innovations in the Social Sciences and Humanites, at Ton Duc Thang Univeristy, Vietnam.…
AMAA on Inequalities of Aging: Paradoxes of Independence in American Home Care by Elana Buch
Questions developed by the members of CU Denver’s ANTH4600/5600, S2021: Kaylynn Aiona, Delilah Chavarria, Darcy Copeland, Keaton Green, Ari Jones, Caitlin Konchan, Chris Kuelling, Kuba Kwiecinski, Ro…
Ask-Me-Almost-Anything (AMAA): Centering Student Engagement with Ethnographic Monographs by Christine Sargent
“Why is this a book?” The student who volunteered this question during a class discussion could not have known how meaningful – and unsettling – I found the…
Foreign Correspondents: Call for Reviewers by Stephanie Lloyd
The past two years have made us realize, more than ever, the importance of creating means of contacting and understanding each other and finding ways of connecting the…
Justin Richland on his book, Cooperation without Submission
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo34191322.html Interview by Hannah McElGunn Hannah McElGunn: Cooperation Without Submission brings together cases drawn from a wide…
Soapbox: on slips and trips.
In the business of selling cultures for quids, and other random translations Once upon a long ago, there was a time when I was more rebelliously young, and…
#Proudtobeprotected: Selfie booths and framing the self for visibility
RAHUL ADVANI In April and May 2021, the deadly second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India, driven largely by the delta variant, saw the country’s collapsing healthcare…
Brian Epstein, “The Social World, Reexamined” (Open Agenda, 2021)
The Social World, Reexamined is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Brian Epstein, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Brian Epstein’s career… Visit…
Aldona Jonaitis, “Art of the Northwest Coast,” Second Edition (U Washington Press, 2021)
Originally published in 2006, Art of the Northwest Coast offers an expansive history of this great tradition, from the earliest known works to those made at the beginning of the…
Waiting to Be Seen – How I Spent My Time in a Pain Treatment Center as a Patient
I am hospitalized while I am typing this, waiting to be seen for cervical vertebral disease, which is causing a daily numbing sensation in both hands. The wait…
Gathering Impressions of London’s Walthamstow Wetlands
ByPhoebe Hamilton-JonesMSc Social and Cultural Anthropology alumnus Standing on the exposed edge of Lockwood reservoir on a bitingly cold, grey day, the noise I am struck by first…
The passing of a maker of film-makers, or was he a shoe-maker? A tribute to Colin Young
In 1923 Dziga Vertov was flattered to be labelled a ‘shoe-maker’ rather than an ‘Artist of Soviet Cinema’. He knew that documentary film-makers “must be more aware that…
Links & Contents I Liked 427
Hi all, It’s one of those weeks where a very eclectic set of links/post/reports has caught my attention-from Barbados becoming a republic, to crypto-mining-related power outages in Kazakhstan; ban…
Informality and international trade: The case for an African Customs Union Part 2 by Keith Hart
(Keynote address for a World Customs Organization/World Bank conference on ‘Informality, international trade and customs’, Brussels, 3-4 June 2013) It … More
Philip Zimbardo, “Critical Situations” (Open Agenda, 2021)
Critical Situations is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University. During this extensive conve… Visit New…
Pantomime Terror and Global South Asia on Screen
Cheap paperback stocking stuffers… – though I wonder if 1 left in stock contradicts that whole value-scarcity thing. Pretty sure there is more than one.
How to Write an Op-Ed: A Free SAPIENS Workshop
Do you have an opinion that you hope can change the world? In this free online webinar, SAPIENS’ editor-in-chief Chip Colwell explains the ins-and-outs of writing op-eds or…
David Graeber LSE Tribute Seminar: Value
‘Value’ is the one central themes that runs throughout and conjoins all of David Graeber’s writings. This week focuses on his first book, whose original title, eventually flipped…
Positioning your position
In the picture above, you see me reading along with Hebrew psalms and prayers during a synagogue (shul) service on simchat torah. Simchat torah is a festive day…