Stars—They Talk Just Like Us!
How an Instagram-based gossip franchise allows celebrities to manage the authenticity of their public personae. They go to the market! They pump gas! They explore the park! One…
Category: English
“We Use Our Mouths to Trade”
At Ghana’s Kumasi Central Market gossip is more than idle talk. It helps traders mitigate economic risk and boost professional reputations. In the yam yard, wholesale traders bargain…
Tea Fit for a Queen
Tea sipping has a distinctly queer pedigree. To serve tea properly, one must be skilled in the art of verbal delivery. During last summer’s Women’s World Cup, Alex…
Gossip—A Thing Humans Do
Gossip and rumor are important informal modes of communication, influencing public opinion and individual actions. But, the distinction between information and falsehood can be difficult to see. Is…
Gossip in the Aid Industry
For international aid workers, gossip is a means of navigating a complex industry and acquiring essential information. All we have to do now Is take these lies and…
What Makes Baby Yoda So Lovable?
The internet doesn’t agree on much these days. But there is one indisputable fact: Baby Yoda is absolutely adorable. For the uninitiated, Baby Yoda is an infantile alien…
Material Culture and Heritage Studies in Northern Guangxi, China at #AFSAM19
I am here using a blog post not to share current news, but to get an older document online and linkable. What follows is the short (public) and…
Material Culture Studies among the Baiku Yao of China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region at #AFSAM18
I am here using a blog post not to share current news, but to get an older document online and linkable. What follows is the short (public) and…
Randal Schnoor, “Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home” (Indiana UP, 2018)
In Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home (Indiana University Press, 2018), Alex Pomson and Randal Schnoor examine the impact of the family on Jewish identity. Through interviewin……
Megan Burke, “When Time Warps: The Lived Experience of Gender, Race, and Sexual Violence” (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
In When Time Warps: The Lived Experience of Gender, Race, and Sexual Violence (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), Megan Burke considers the relationship of sexual violence to lived…
Doctor Andrew Graan discussing fake news and anthropology on PoLAR
[…] So, where does fake news figure into all of this? I would like to suggest that fake news—both as deliberately false news stories and as a political…
Review: #Identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation
#Identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation by Abigail de Kosnik and Keith Feldman (eds) serves as an exciting reminder of the illuminating potential of academic inquiry. An edited…
Threats to Destroy Cultural Heritage Harm Us All
Trump’s Twitter intimidation may have been politically expedient bluster. But, it threatened our collective cultural legacy, regional stability, and scientific inquiry. When United States President D…
Book: Theorising Media and Conflict
Budka, P., & Bräuchler, B. (Eds.). (2020). Theorising media and conflict. Anthropology of Media. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books. Cover Theorising Media & Conflict Theorising Me…
Review: ‘A Socialist Peace? Explaining the Absence of War in an African Country’ by Mike McGovern
In A Socialist Peace? Mike McGovern aims to explain why there was no civil war in Guinea at a time when many expected otherwise. Narrowing down on a particular time-period…
Eco-Horror: Facing Climate Change in Minas Gerais, Brazil
Storm clouds over Minas Gerais. Photo by Mariela Guimarães (Pedro Rocha Franco and Jefferson Delbem 2020). The January 2020 floods in Minas Gerais, Brazil were catastrophic for the…
Christopher J. Shepherd, “Haunted Houses and Ghostly Encounters: Ethnography and Animism in East Timor, 1860-1975” (NIAS Press, 2019)
Anyone who tries to understand the history, religion, and especially the “culture” of Southeast Asia, will soon encounter the phenomenon of animism, the belief that landscapes, natural object……
Eating in Class: Notes on Nourishment and Decolonial Pedagogy by Carina Truyts
It’s a common adage, following Lévi-Strauss, that “food is good to think with.” A class assignment that includes food-centred ethnographic presentations expands the scope of such thinking into…
Naked Anthropologist News: Bloody Brexit, Feb 2020
News from the many worlds of sex work, provided to Radio Ava in London, February 2020 by me, the Naked Anthropologist, Laura Agustín. The Naked Anthropologist celebrates…
Feminism, disability, and reproductive autonomy: abortion in times of Zika in Brazil by Anahí Guedes de Mello
For English click here. Feminismo, deficiência e autonomia reprodutiva: o aborto em tempos de Zika no Brasil Introdução Em novembro de 2015, após o anúncio de que o…
Judith T. Irvine and Susan Gal on their new book
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/signs-of-difference/E69813363E4CD9927C6C8E1BD2FC3011 Interview by Hannah McElgunn Hannah McElgunn: Signs of Difference begins with analyses that draw from long te…
A Bibliography of Trash Animals
Gulls. Pigeons. Rats. Lice. These ‘trash animals’ live alongside waste, filth, ruination and decay. Attitudes, behaviour and infrastructure aimed at dealing with ‘trash animals’ tell us a lot…
Robert Frank, “Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work” (Princeton UP, 2020)
Psychologists have long understood that social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But social influence is a two-way street―our environm… Visit…