Best of SAPIENS 2020
[no-caption] Mint Images/Getty Images This year humanity was confronted with a crush of pressing issues both old and new: a pandemic, political unrest, a widespread reckoning with racism…
Category: English
Long live the tundra nomads!
Just found out from the local news that in the Novyi Urengoy hospital two Nenets elders survived covid-19 and recovered from pneumonia, at the age of more than…
Jihad, universalism, and the Left: A conversation with Darryl Li
Since its publication in 2019, Darryl Li’s The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity (Stanford University Press) has been the focus of a great deal…
S. L. Lewis and M. A. Maslin, “The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene” (Yale UP, 2018)
Meteorites, mega-volcanoes, and plate tectonics–the old forces of nature–have transformed Earth for millions of years. They are now joined by a new geological force–humans. Our actions hav… Visit…
John Hartigan Jr., “Shaving the Beasts: Wild Horses and Ritual in Spain” (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
Wild horses still roam the mountains of Galicia, Spain. But each year, in a ritual dating to the 1500s called rapa das bestas, villagers herd these “beasts” together and…
David Henig, “Remaking Muslim Lives: Everyday Islam in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina” (U Illinois Press, 2020)
The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and the cultural and economic dispossession caused by the collapse of socialism continue to force Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina to reconfigure the……
S. L. Lewis and M. A. Maslin, “The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene” (Yale UP, 2018)
Meteorites, mega-volcanoes, and plate tectonics–the old forces of nature–have transformed Earth for millions of years. They are now joined by a new geological force–humans. Our actions have driven…
David Henig, “Remaking Muslim Lives: Everyday Islam in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina” (U Illinois Press, 2020)
The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and the cultural and economic dispossession caused by the collapse of socialism continue to force Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina to reconfigure their…
John Hartigan Jr., “Shaving the Beasts: Wild Horses and Ritual in Spain” (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
Wild horses still roam the mountains of Galicia, Spain. But each year, in a ritual dating to the 1500s called rapa das bestas, villagers herd these “beasts” together and…
Unsettling the Past: Radically Reimagining Archaeological Knowledge
For decades, Black and Indigenous archaeologists have rightfully called for a radical reimagining of how archaeology interprets and understands the past. The formulation of archaeologies by, for, and…
Guidelines in Action: The University of Colorado Museum Studies Program
Guidelines in Action: The University of Colorado Museum Studies Program …
Iowa’s Grapes of Wrath: Preserving Land for Food Production in the U.S.
Paul Durrenberger In Grapes of Wrath American writer John Steinbeck told the disheartening story of defeated farmers in 1939 Oklahoma. A bulldozer demolishes a shanty as the family…
Podcast #4 is online! Guest: Jochem Kootstra
Jochem Kootstra is onderzoeker, copywriter en programma-maker (om maar een greep uit zijn bezigheden te geven) en bekijkt technologie door een antropologische bril. Door deze bril ziet hij…
Crisis and Opportunity—A Look at 2020
[no-caption] Ada daSilva/Getty Images The Coronavirus Pandemic 2020 will be remembered as the year that COVID-19 swept the globe. This highly contagious virus moves from person to person,…
Infrastructure, Maintenance, and Waste in a Myanmar Hospital by Nora Wuttke
Design by okb-buro.com Hand sketches shown in with this article are by the author from her fieldwork in Yangon in 2020. All images copyright by Nora Wuttke. The…
Does COVID-19 Facilitate New Migration? Exploring a Fast-Expanding Indian Diaspora in Germany (#WitnessingCorona)
Hide Press Release (2 Less Words) Amrita Datta Picture 1: Young Indian white collar migrants are protesting at the Brandenbuerger Tor in Berlin against the impending citizenship…
Michal S. Raucher, “Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority Among Haredi Women” (Indiana UP, 2020)
In Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority among Haredi Women (Indiana University Press, 2020), Michal Raucher explores the ways ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel make decisions about t… Visit New Books in…
Michal S. Raucher, “Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority Among Haredi Women” (Indiana UP, 2020)
In Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority among Haredi Women (Indiana University Press, 2020), Michal Raucher explores the ways ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel make decisions about … Visit New Books in…
Genealogy of Racism on American Indians
Notes transcribed from Smedley, Audrey. Race in North America, Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, 2nd edition, Westview press, 1999, Comments are my own. The origins of racism…
Working in a Fracture Zone: Learning to Research Mental Health from Multiple Cultures by Gerald P McKinley
We are an ensemble cast. As such, it is perhaps appropriate that one of the first places where we all came together as a team had at one…
Introduction: Working Definitions: Making and Unmaking “Medical Anthropology” around the World by Elizabeth Durham
Anthropology’s interest in health, illness, prevention, and treatment is longstanding and increasingly robust. In this era of medical development, epidemics and pandemics, and debates in both the oft…
Without Norms, Societies Fall Apart
From time to time, I meet an American who likes to tell me that the United Kingdom, the country of my birth, has a weaker democracy than the…
Politicizing the demand – White Marriage in Iran
Politicizing the demand White Marriage in Iran , Although the protests against the compulsory hijab in Iran have been politicized, this has not demoralized women activists, some observers…
Sharon J. Yoon, “The Cost of Belonging: An Ethnography on Solidarity and Mobility in Beijing’s Koreatown” (Oxford UP, 2020)
How vulnerable can you be as a researcher? Why, in a commercially successful city like Wangqing, are Chinese Koreans more successful in their businesses than entrepreneurs from Korea…