Ysyakh 2020 – solstice festival online
Midsummer, solstice on the 21 June is for many northern peoples and cultures an important holiday. In Finland it’s called Juhannus and a state holiday. In Yakutia, where…
Category: English
Reigniting student activism at UWI
This co-authored op-ed from University of the West Indies, Sociology PhD candidate Nathan Chapman and myself, is meant as a conversation starter about the importance of student activism…
Reigniting student activism at UWI
This co-authored op-ed from University of the West Indies, Sociology PhD candidate Nathan Chapman and myself, is meant as a conversation starter about the importance of student activism…
Celebrating the Bustling All-Black Towns of Oklahoma
Tulsa and eastern Oklahoma are the center of my personal universe. That place is where my heart resides. Normally, I would be there right now contributing to the…
Sharing responsibilities, coping with the coronavirus: why Swedish and French response strategies are not that different by Morgan Meyer
Citizens, governments and academics spend much time these days with one activity: making comparisons.[1] National response strategies to cope with the coronavirus are compared, as well as whether…
Population Ageing and COVID-19 Infections in Sri Lanka by Kalinga Tudor Silva
This essays builds on my previous research on history of malaria epidemics in Sri Lanka, intergenerational support mechanisms for elderly and ongoing research work on identity, infection and…
A window of opportunity
Our slowed-down, cooled-down, scaled-down lives during the pandemic are evidence that quality of life does not depend on high productivity and frantic consumption. Suddenly, it has become respectable…
Ten Film Scenes Every Stay-At-Home Cinephile Should Know
Ted Gideonse is a medical anthropologist who studies the effects of public health discourses about HIV and drugs. As people with more than a passing understanding of biology…
Imagining Rural Immunity
Political myth-making about America’s rural “heartland” is doubly pernicious, increasing rural vulnerability to COVID-19 and ignoring the disintegration of rural health services. In March 2020, Fair…
How to Start a Meditation Practice
I came to meditation because my brain is always running. The part of an academic’s job that requires me to think and theorize sometimes grows much larger than the…
Saving Anthropology from COVID-19
Higher education is at a crossroads. Can we adapt to the ongoing challenges and create transformative educational courses for an uncertain future? As colleges and universities started shutting…
Sign Languages as Disaster Entertainment
Sign language interpreters have become social media celebrities of our coronavirus moment. But signing is not a form of light entertainment; it should be lifesaving information. Dutch health…
The Funny Wrath of Italy’s Viral Mayors
In March 2020, a video of Italian mayors scolding citizens for failing to stay at home went viral. Only ostensibly insignificant, these clickable white men reveal new forms…
Coloring for Anthropologists
Get creative with our coloring page produced in collaboration with March Mammal Madness. Image description: A gorilla stands in mid-stride. Charon Henning March Mammal Madness is a bracket-based tourn…
Social Inequality in Times of Pandemics
We should not expect COVID-19 to behave in the same way as historical pandemics of plague. But both show how inequalities exacerbate mortality outcomes. It’s a gorgeous, warm…
On Living through Plagues and Wars in Lebanon
In much of the Global North COVID-19 is wreaking existential havoc. For the war-seasoned Lebanese in the throes of an economic meltdown and ongoing protests, it is yet…
(E)thnographic Correspondence and Collaborative Improvisation
by Joelle Powe, Thea McRae, Christina Jones and Laith A. Ayogu. Screenshots from virtual meetings with authors on Google Hangouts and Zoom, taken during quarantine in various locations. Screenshot…
Engaging the Pandemic
How one medical anthropologist is boosting our capacity to understand and contend with COVID-19. In late February 2020, I traveled back to the United States from India and…
“The Hostel saved me, really” – addiction and homelessness under Covid-19 by Johannes Lenhard
When I did my second shift of volunteering at the Hostel[1], new rules were already in place: ‘stay-at-home’ orders had been issued and were enforceable (if not necessarily e…
Links & Contents I Liked 370
Happy Midsummer from Sweden! It has been an intense week, listening to two exceptional events on racism, #globaldev, becoming #AntiRacistinAid and compiling a new resource on that topic.…
Enikő Vincze: Post-covid “Economic recovery” in Romania: forget labor, save capital, and support militarization?
Enikő Vincze, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoc On May 28th the liberal Romanian government published the last data on the employment situation. This is therefore a good time to review…
My Apprenticeship with Dan
Below find the fourth of a series of guest posts offered in celebration on the occasion of our colleague and friend Daniel C. Swan’s retirement from the University…
Pandemic, Democratic Death, and Antifragility in Contemporary Italy: A Personal Reflection (#WitnessingCorona)
Hide Press Release (2 Less Words) Annamaria Fantauzzi This article aims to reflect on how dying and the perception of death in the COVID-19 pandemic have changed…
Robert Samet, “Deadline: Populism and the Press in Venezuela” (U Chicago Press, 2019)
Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, has been ranked as one of the most violent cities in the world. In Deadline: Populism and the Press in Venezuela (University of…