Silicon Satire
How memes articulate tech trouble and signal “all the things.” History repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce”—especially in Silicon Valley. In April 2018,…
Category: English
‘More Anthropologists on Wall Street Please’ Revisited
by Silvia Irina Berástegui In October of 2011, The Economist published an article called “More Anthropologists on Wall Street Please” in which the author, one ‘M.S.’, responded to a…
The Social Life of Robots, pt 2: Sex and Temperament in Three Cyborg Societies
Part 2 of The Social Life of Robots, with Emma Backe. In this episode hosts Adam Gamwell, Ryan Collins and Emma Backe tackle sex and gender norms underlying…
The Social Life of Robots, pt 2: Sex and Temperament in Three Cyborg Societies
Part 2 of The Social Life of Robots, with Emma Backe. In this episode hosts Adam Gamwell, Ryan Collins and Emma Backe tackle sex and gender norms underlying…
Bernadete Barton, “Stripped: More Stories from Exotic Dancers” (NYU Press, 2017)
Women get into stripping for money, writes Dr. Bernadete Barton, and the experience the girls have throughout their career in exotic dancing varies. Dr. Barton uses Stripped: More…
Martin Demant Frederiksen, “An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular” (Zero Books, 2018)
An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular (Zero Books, 2018) is an “exploration of what goes missing when one looks for meaning” (p. 1). The book is both an…
Versprechen gegeben, Versprechen gebrochen – Resettlement-Zahlen seit 2016 mehr als halbiert
Seit Langem wird nur ein Bruchteil der Flüchtlinge mit Resettlement-Bedarf auch tatsächlich umgesiedelt. Die Staatengemeinschaft hat sich in der New Yorker Erklärung 2016 dazu verpflichtet, diese Lück…
Seminar: Digital & Visual Technologies as Material Culture
In the summer term 2019, I am giving a seminar on digital and visual technologies as material culture at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology (MA &…
Lecture: Ritual & Religion in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Together with Martin Luger, I am organizing a lecture on ritual and religion in social and cultural anthropology at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the…
Martin Demant Frederiksen, “An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular” (Zero Books, 2018)
An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular (Zero Books, 2018) is an “exploration of what goes missing when one looks for meaning” (p. 1). The book is both an…
Bernadete Barton, “Stripped: More Stories from Exotic Dancers” (NYU Press, 2017)
Women get into stripping for money, writes Dr. Bernadete Barton, and the experience the girls have throughout their career in exotic dancing varies. Dr. Barton uses Stripped: More…
Sierra Leone’s laws to protect women have unintended consequences, by Luisa Schneider
Age-of-consent law is complex. If it is set too high, there’s a risk that it will undercut young people’s agency. If it is set too low, it does…
AAA Communities Coming Soon!
David Beriss This is going to be a very quick note about two related things. First, many SAFN members (and many members of the American Anthropological Association) have…
Single Shot: Interspecies Care and Responsibility
Dog keeping is a polluted, unholy, and prohibited practice in rural Pakistan. Many Sunni Muslims belonging to Hanfi jurisprudence consider the dog’s mere presence in a house a…
Why the Myth of the “Savage Indian” Persists
Media portrayals of “good Indians” and “bad Indians” have shaped the minds of generations of Americans. Harold M. Lambert/Getty Images Peter Pan, the beloved children’s classic, is sure…
Review: Against The Grain
James C. Scott Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. ISBN #: 9780300182910 David Sutton Southern Illinois University With his 5…
Critiquing Big Data in China and Beyond
“I do think that the Internet truly makes us feel the world can become a smaller place,” an interlocutor, whom I will call Bo, told me in his…
Bodies of Flesh and Ore: Geosocial Formation of Miners and Metal in Highland Bolivia
Editorial Note: This post is part of our series highlighting the work of the Anthropology and Environment Society’s 2018 Roy A. Rappaport Prize Finalists. We asked them to outline the…
Geraldine Heng, “The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approaches to race that show the…
Geraldine Heng, “The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approaches to race that show the…
Towards a compassionate turn
Introduction When The New Ethnographer launched in 2018, several decades had passed since the reflexive turn of the 1980s, in which anthropologists were asked to reflect thoughtfully…
Finnish ski jumper Matti Nykänen as trickster
Matti Nykänen, a famous Finnish ski jumper, passed away in February. He was both a superior athlete and a very troubled man – increasingly so over the years.…
Competence for Citizenship by Gitte Beckmann
White ants are a delicacy in the subregion Acholi in northern Uganda. Since fresh ones are available only once a year when they become flying roamers, one 100-kg…