As part and parcel of China’s compressed modernization, processes of state-led rural urbanization through land expropriation and rural-to-urban relocation have been transforming rural Chinese people’s lives in unprecedented…
By Peter Versteeg, on behalf of the SpW team – Good people, Summer has arrived – sing cucu and drink saison! We look back at a fruitful year…
Climate Hegemony by Laurie Parsons draws on Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony to explain why governments and corporations have failed to take meaningful action on the climate crisis:…
ByLara Scott-Rule BSc Anthropology with Year Abroad I’ve always said, if you don’t look in the mirror, you don’t feel any different. It’s just, you look at yourself and you think, who are yo…
Reflections on the process of co-editing a book across Rapa Nui, Germany, Chile, France and the United States.
A grandmother pauses before answering a child. The meaning of her words lies not only in the words themselves, but in tone, shared history, the relationship between speaker…
Half of page 99 in my dissertation is taken up by a photograph of a 500-feet-tall cell tower. I am struck by the recursivity of the tower; now,…
This post started after talking with my friend and colleague, Inge. Since we probably wouldn’t see each other for a while during the summer break, she asked me…
In this episode I discuss the book Understanding Social Images: Essays on Visual Methods and Teaching Anthropology (Berghahn, 2025) with co-editors David Zeitlyn and Chihab El Khachab, a…
This is the (overdue!) second part of a series reflecting on changes I made to my undergraduate course Anthropology for Liberation at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington…
ByZichen YinMA Material and Visual Culture Instructions for Becoming Modern is a visual essay in the form of a fictional manual built from late Qing and early Republican image…
The early twenty-first century ushered in a period of change in Bolivia. The country welcomed its first Indigenous president, a new constitution, and a profusion of laws that…
Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (Daunt Books Publishing, 2025) is a unique reflection on the much-mythologised Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the Ukrainian…
My friend and colleague Kevin Ming has published his new book, The Art of Getting By: Wisdom and Resilience from China’s Migrant Women (Algora Publishing 2026). Here is…
ByRie KimotoMSc Anthropology and Professional Practice “Dead bodies are buried under the cherry trees! For how can it be believed that cherry blossoms bloom so brilliantly otherwise?R…
Backyard gardens flush with cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers where bees buzz and chickens scratch. Beyond, a forest filled with blackberries and jewelweed. Inspired by childhood memories of his…
The rise of “heritage” foods—that is, the reinvention of traditional foods—has enjoyed a high profile thanks to the oft-praised efforts of chefs such as Sean Brock and René…
John Snow’s 19th century dot-map (from the series introduction) is representative of a shift in the public management of infectious diseases towards measuring density of confirmed cases within…
As I write this I have sixteen Claude threads open. They look scattered, but every one ladders up to something I’m trying to accomplish — and I’m the…
ByHayley SohBSc Anthropology with Year Abroad When I visited the British Museum, I happened to chance upon a display of Javanese puppets and models tucked away in one of…
This article is a part of a series about stuckness in science and technology. Read the introduction to the series here. On a sunny day in November 2021,…
there are many instances of sentences written to specific people – love you all – that are also just thinking out loud, so this here below is one…